Dinotopia

Rating:
Summary: The Dinotopian Fan Will Adore It!
Review: I'd read Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time By James Gurney years ago. Its format-a journal like book, full of spectacular painted pictures of Dinosaurs living amoungst humans (or perhaps the other way around) was exciting to me, and I loved the book straight off, with it's lovely illustrations and even better story, with superb characters and a wonderful plotline.
When I heard about this series debut as a "mega series" on TV, I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd heard some rumours, and I believed that the storyline had been changed. (I was getting ready to be disappointed.)
I was wrong. This charming and wonderful movie is what takes place after the book...and I was thrilled to hear the books characters names-Lee Crabb, Will and Arthur Denison and Sylvia of the Hatchery, intertwined with the story of David and Karl.

David and Karl are half brothers, who were never close and couldn't be more different. Karl is defiant and modernized, while Dave prefers to stay at home, reading books and being alone. But their father ask them to go on a plane trip in his personal plane, and reluctantly they agree. Their father puts Karl that the controls, and they're off.
But quickly, they run into a severe storm, and the plane crashes into the ocean below them. Quickly fighting to get out, Karl and David go to the surface, only to find that their father is not with them.
Presuming he is dead, they are practically washed upon a strange island, which at first seems to be empty of life.
As they explore, trying to find someone to help them, they find a carved head of some creature. Suddenly, a loud explosion comes from within it, and it blows somewhat apart.There they meet the peg-legged Cyrus Crabb, who informs them that he was on some sort of archaeological job, and that they've been washed upon "Dinotopia".
He takes them to the village nearby, and to their intense amazement, they come across an angry dinosaur, flinging it's spiked tail at huts and stand along the roads of the small town. A girl mysteriously appears, and soothes it into submission.
The next day, Karl and David travel with the girl-Marion, daughter of the mayor of Waterfall city,who they will eventually BOTH fall in love with (and does this create conflict) to find out more about where they are and try to find a way to make it back home...but little do they know, they will be needed to help and save the entire island of Dinotopia from destruction, aided by a scholarly dinosaur anemd Zippo, a new baby Twenty-Six (aptly named by Karl, who has not much imagination) and the maybe trustworthy Cyrus Crabb.
It is an enchanting movie, great for true lovers of the Dinotopia books or just fans of Dinos or great movies, it was much better than I ever hoped it would be. I'm truly excited for it to come out on DVD-my whole family really enjoyed it, and we will hope to watch it many more times in days to come.

One raindrop raises the sea...

Rating:
Summary: A Dinotopia with the special effects but not the magic
Review: "Dinotopia" is definitely aimed for kids, who will love the cute little baby triceratops, want to have a conversation with Zippo the talking, scream at the tag team tyrannosauruses, and dream about riding a flying dinosaur. For older viewers the going is a bit rougher because of the silly humans running around in this beautiful utopia. But then there is certainly nothing wrong with adults watching it the first time around with the kids and then letting them watch it over and over again on their own.

The idea is that we identify with young Karl (Tyron Leitso) and David Scott (Wentworth), who end up on Dinotopia when the plane piloted by their father crashes in the ocean. Washed ashore they encounter the worst possible person to run into first, Cyrus Crabb (David Thewlis), although this takes several hours of this television movie for the boys to figure out (we are suspicious pretty much from the first). As they are exposed to the wonders of Dinotopia we go along for the ride. But while David wants to fit in his half-brother Karl cannot stop putting everything down and resisting everything. Thrown into the mix is the beautiful Marion Waldo (Katie Carr), who is the offspring of the buffonish Mayor Waldo (Jim Carter) and the saintly Rosemary Waldo (Alice Krige, in a performance too good for this production). Of course both boys are interested in Marion and we keep waiting for her to give some indication she has made up her mind between the two while they both continue to make puppy dog eyes at her at every opportunity.

To make things even more interesting it seems the Scott boys have arrived at a pivotal moment in the life of Dinotopia, as the supply of sun stones that drive every technological feature of the place are about to die out. Until that crisis comes becomes part of the thrilling climax, in which the citizens of Dinotopia prove themselves to be too stupid to go inside when a horde of flying carnivores descend upon their city, the boys are distracted by their divergent paths for becoming part of this society. Karl is of the earth, so he is sent to a triceratops hatchery, where he is introduced to his saurian life mate, a baby that he peevishly names 26 (because that is the number on her egg). David proves to be of the air, which requires him to be part of the saurian air corp. Marion turns out to be a little bit of everything so that is not going to help her decide between the two newcomers. Will Karl learn to love his cute little dinosaur, who insists on thinking of him as her mom? Will David ever be able to stay in his saddle during the movies many "Raging Dinosaurs" sequences? Do you really have to watch this movie to figure out the answers?

My understanding is that this was originally a six-hour mega-series that aired on three nights, but is now bloated up to 240 minutes for video viewing. The re-editing does a nice job of making the film more seamless, so you do not get the same sense over and over again that we are fading in and out of commercial breaks. The special effects are nice and on a bar with what he have seen in television documentaries like "Walking With Dinosaurs." But the story is fairly predictable from start to finish, a fact that might elude most children but may be apparent to the older and wiser of that group. Ultimately it seems that the idea of Dinotopia, marvelously created in those original paintings we saw, does not carry itself over to actual execution, even in the world of CGI.

For me the problem with this film crystallized every time there was a scene in the council of Dinotopia. Every time the buffoonish mayor prattled on about how they should hold onto their traditions and codes even as the society was going down for the count, I wanted to know what the big triceratops in the balcony was saying. His untranslated bellows were more interesting to me than anything the humans had to say.

Rating:
Summary: Hot stuffing.
Review: This is a hot movie like jurassic park with talking dinos.
Its a shame they dont have giganotosaurus.
Well 3 people crash land on a contenet dinotopia with a water
fall city as a capital.
So they meet a young girl and find proffesor Zippo(Segnosaurus).
they discover a sunstone is the key to let dinotopia live.
they get separated and Carl goes to a hatchery where he gets a female protoceratops wich he named 26.
while David goes to canyon city and learns to fly with high flyers(not pteranodons)I think.
a fellow discovers Zippos wonders are correct
and tries to help him but he is also a thief.
But david and carl reunite and go with the guy while the princess and zippo have to stay on land.
the sunstone power in water fall city is failing and canyon citys people besides flyers have all died by pteranodons...

Rating:
Summary: Um, Roar??
Review: I wasn't expecting to be blown away by this movie, but I was hoping that it might exceed my poor expectations. It didn't. I think Rex from Pixar's 'Toy Story' was a more beleivable dinosaur, and the point of the story was....well, lame. Those lame sun rocks or whatever they were weren't explained very well as to WHY the kept the carnivourous dinosaurs away, but the other ones weren't bothered by them. And why could some of the Dinosaurs talk while the others just carried people around?

The only thing I liked about this movie was that I at least got some eye candy, those brothers were pretty cute. At least my kid brother liked it.
I can't believe they even came up with the idea to make a series out of this....I thought the never ending 'Land Before Time' videos were bad...but this is live action and computer animated. Hopefully ABC will fire whoever keeps coming up with these stupid movies.

Rating:
Summary: for the dinosaur in us all
Review: Dinotopia will not impress you with its script and acting. In fact, these are the major points that hinder the movie. But if you are willing to look past such and enjoy the story for what it's worth, Dinotopia comes as a recommened 4 hours. I've always been a stickler for fantasy and adventure, and am even more biased towards any movie that has dinosaurs in it, so here I was able to appreciate the world being represented (if even rather poorly). Of course, if this isn't your cup of tea, know that Dinotopia includes flashy special effects. The dinosaurs, while not up to par with the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs, are well-animated, and believable enough to get the job done. Don't be fooled by what this movie can't do, because what it can do may just as well be enough.

Rating:
Summary: Can you critics say F-A-N-T-A-S-Y?
Review: Jeeezzz...

Some of you are looking for logical plot endings, complex characters, and great dialog.

This movie is meant to ENTERTAIN... This is not meant to be a realistic dinosaur movie -- it's FANTASY so cut it some slack.

By the way, I thought the sets were awesome -- made me want to visit Waterfall City. And the acting wasn't that bad either.

Rating:
Summary: so much wasted beauty
Review: This story was produced with every possible visual refinement, and looks splendid. It bombed. So it was re-shot with other actors. Idiots. The problem was not with the actors, who went from competent to extremely good, and all looked great (even Hollywood cannot improve, for female pulchritude, on Alice Krige and Katie Carr - who is so beautiful that she makes you wish to hug and kiss her just for being there); it was with the totally cretinous story, in which a ridiculously facile Communist utopia shades off into eco-new-age PC: "we don't approve of violence in Dinotopia" - gimme a break! What is more, the story is astonishingly old-fashioned - it reads like a rip-off of E.R. Burroughs or the more exotic bits of Conan Doyle If you want an encyclopedia of what NOT to do with a story, you could do worse than make a thorough study of this. Meanwhile, it is sad that the desire of the producers to cover their arses for this apalling miscalculation has probably blighted the careers of most of the protagonists of the first series. The problem is that people who would think that this was a story worth shooting would probably not know decent writing if it bit their whole leg off.

Rating:
Summary: Cartoony dinosaurs, wooden actors
Review: Oh gosh, look, it's a dinosaur.

That's about as much excitement as Karl and David Scott, the two half-brother protagonists of Dinotopia, muster during the six-hour television mini-series, now available as a four-hour movie (minus all the commercials) on DVD. Despite some excellent special effects -- not up to Spielberg quality, mind you, but pretty good for a Hallmark special -- the movie plods like a 60-ton brachiosaurus with a sore foot and a brain the size of a walnut.

The biggest problem is that these two young men, cynical though they may be, find themselves stranded on an island populated by dinosaurs -- some of the intellectual and speaking variety, no less -- and they forget to be astonished. Really. Not once did I get a sense of "oh wow" from these guys. Then again, they're not big on emotional reactions from scene one.

Kids will adore it, assuming they're not yet old enough for the Jurassic Park franchise and haven't seen dinosaurs in realistic-looking, in-your-face action. The dinosaurs of Dinotopia are pretty good by video-game standards, but they pale in comparison to the ones we've seen on the big screen over the past decade. Specifically, the colors and lighting are always a bit off, making it overtly obvious the "scalies" were crafted on a computer screen and superimposed on the live-action set.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good
Review: I think that this is an entertaining, enthralling story with a few unanswered questions. Without a doubt, it has some spectacular computer graphics.

Rating:
Summary: Equality through Repression
Review: Dinotopia, a "lost" island out in the middle of nowhere where Dinosaurs and Humans live in "perfect" harmony, in an Utopian society. In order to live in this perfect harmony, the government body of Dinotopia has discovered (and enacted) a set of ancient laws that make everybody (dinos and humans alike) essentially equal. However, with this equality comes repression. Repression in that the government basically appoints each individual into a position (or job) in what are basically communes that they think would be best suited for that person to help benefit the overall Dinotopia community. So regardless of what one actually wants to do, the government says that you will do this (and like it) whether you want to do it or not. By forcing folks to do jobs they don't or are really suited for, it prevents them from excelling at what they're truely great at and more suited to do.

This experiment is exactly why Utopian, ie. Communist and Socialist societies almost always fail. Forced placement runs contrary to human nature. Utopioan societies such as what Dinotopia tries to achieve also requires everyone to agree to this kind of system to work otherwise the system fails. You get just one person out of a hundred that disagrees with the system, the system breaks down and if you were in Stalinist Russia, you would "disappear". One other disturbing aspect to these Dinotopian laws were that they weren't meant for questioning. Accept them at all costs, freedom of speech is quelled. This aspect comes into play in the overall story.

But anyway, the film itself is visually stunning. State-of-the-art computer graphics bring live inaction between dinosaurs and humans for the first time. You thought Jurassic Park was something? Dinotopia blows the socks off of Jurassic Park. For the first time in film and CGI history, the CGI computers were used on-set right along the film cameras so that they could visually track low-res CGI models of the dinos through the shots of live action. This was required so that the inter-action between dino and human would look realistic. The only negatives I could see about the CGI, was perhaps the lack of shadow dileniation on the CGI dinos. There was some, but not enough to give it that totally realistic look. In other words the CGI was too clean. The film runs into the 4-hour mark and has probably the most visual effects shots in any non-animated film.

The only negatives about the film is probably the overall story. To me, it was a bit simplistic. The Utopian society was protected from the carnivores by a series of Sun Stones, crystals left over from the big asteroid. However these Stones were losing their strength thus jeopardizing the safety of the Waterfall City, Dinotopia's capital, from the carnivores. It came down to the "new comers" with the cojohones to break the strict Dinotopia rules to discover new Stones.