Dinotopia

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful 'fantasy world' miniseries
Review: This is a GREAT 4 hour fantasy miniseries, with beautiful sets and production artwork, terrific special effects, and a pretty decent story line. Having said this, I have to admit that the plot was targeted at adolescents and young teens, and for an adult to fully enjoy the story requires that you slip your mind out of `critical' gear for a few hours. Every time I watch Dinotopia, I am blown away by the unexpectedly high `production values' in this relatively unknown miniseries. Some of the reviews posted here lean in the direction that Dinotopia's effects are `almost as good' as movies like "Jurassic Park", and "Walking with Dinosaurs" but I actually think, in fairness, I would have to say that the effects in `Dinotopia' are better, or at least, at a minimum, more `ambitious'. The reason I say this is that `Dinotopia' takes on the MUCH more difficult challenge of turning some of the dinosaurs into full time, walking, talking, supporting characters, (and pulls this off remarkably well). Also, in this miniseries, a much higher percentage of the scenes are `effects shots' involving a dinosaur character, and under these circumstances, you would think that there are bound to be a few shots that just don't quite `hold up', but I'll be darned if I can pick out a single scene to cite as an example. Given the fact that we are talking about maybe ten times the number of scenes involving dinosaurs as the first `Jurassic Park' movie, and given that the dinosaurs are interacting with the human characters in much more complex ways (in one scene, a man sized dinosaur named `Zippo' plays ping-pong with one of the human characters), I think they did an absolutely remarkable job on the effects in this movie. Even minor characters like the `postal bird' are executed beautifully. Aside from the dinosaur effects, the quality of the sets and production artwork in many of the scenes is absolutely stunning, making this miniseries a real visual treat. As far as the story line goes, I have to admit that I had to chuckle at times over the `psycho-babble', `granola-flake' perfection of the `Dinotopian' society, but this is, after all, a fantasy. Given the quantity and quality of the material, and the low cost of this DVD set, I think this miniseries was quite a bargain, and I can't think of another recent DVD purchase that has pleased me more.

Rating:
Summary: Way better than you expect
Review: I rented this on tape because I saw that FRAMESTORE did the effects. They seem to only choose quality productions to work on (I love WALKING WITH DINOSAURS and LOST WORLD), so I thought I'd give this a shot. After seeing it, I've come to believe that I HAVE TO OWN IT. It was THAT GOOD. This movie has PHENOMENAL effects work to rival any StarWars movie. As a matter of fact, you'll see Lucas ripped off Dinotopia with the Naboo city scapes when you see this movie. That's right... they came from the Dinotopia book first.

This film has a good story, GREAT EFFECTS WORK (to rival a released movie), and good acting. Okay, maybe the acting is not that great, but the acting (the two main actors) got better as the movie went on. The effects more than make up for it. The character arcs are good... often I was wondering what direction the story was going, but it has a great payoff at the end.. and the characters resolve their individual challenges pretty well.

Much better than I expected, and not typical television fare. It should have come out in the theater in an abbreviated, three hour version. I say that because I can't see myself in the theater for more than the longest LOTR movie, anyway. Anyway, great buy!!

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