Movie Review: Walking with Dinosaurs 3D

This weeks Cinema visit was to see Walking with Dinosaurs in 3D, Now this film broke one of my cardinal rules when selecting a film to see - Being in 3D, Normally I will not go to see a 3D movie as I really don't find the technology adds anything whatsoever to the film, I am not entirely sure what it is supposed to give - other than headaches but I can assure you that at no point during the movie did I forget I was in a cinema and start to believe I was in fact in Cretaceous Era Alaska so no idea why studio executives think I would prefer to watch this film with big black glasses on instead of with my own eyes. But I digress the fact is that both my Wife and Daughter love Dinosaurs so I really didn't have much choice in this so I went to see it.

Now the first thing that struck me about this was that they took everything that was great about Walking with Dinosaurs the TV show/Documentary and after they had removed it filled it with endless rubbish, the beauty of WWD on the BBC was that it was a nature documentary showing us creatures that are long since extinct but in the style of the documentaries we had grown up with, in short it was a revolution, this movie however replaced all of that with a story staring a small dinosaur on an adventure and featured a cast of talking dinosaurs and a bird as a narrator. Now I don't want you to think that I disliked this film, it was an OK film my problem is that it is the complete opposite of what made the Documentary Series, books and the Live Show so great (And yes I have seen all of them - as I said my Wife loves Dinos) This film would have been better placed as a sequel to Disney's Dinosaur than a feature length Walking With Dinosaurs, But if you can cut off the absolutely pointless starting scene (With Karl Urban who I would assume has kids who like Dinosaurs as I can't imagine he saw this as a career progression.) and the ending when the humans come back what you are left with is a pretty light fluffy "Runt comes good" story.

My best advice for this film (Obviously other than my usual advice of watching it in 2D) would be to switch the volume off and just enjoy watching the Dinosaurs and the stunning scenery.

Jokes don't quite Go the Distance

This weeks visit to the Cinema was to see the Romantic Comedy "Going the Distance" the film stars real life couple (At the time, I believe they have broken up now.) Drew Barrymore and Justin Long however even the chemistry between them was not enough to carry a very flat movie.

The Jokes ranged across the full spectrum of bad comedy from ridiculous setups that are signposted from so far away that you feel tired by the time it arrives, to the current trend for replacing comedy with too much information and random swear words. There were a few funny moments but unfortunately as we had already seen them so many times in the trailers it took the edge of them.

Christina Applegate gave a good performance as Drew Barrymores sister and got the best laughs of the film whilst London band The Boxer Rebellion put in a few long cameo performances which seemed to drag a little, but as I have always thought they were one of the best unsigned acts so any exposure they can get is a positive, although I was not particularly impressed of their decision to release an iTunes only album, but that was due to my dislike for Apple not the band.

The Award for most unbelievable characters go to Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day who act as the usual cretinous "Friends of the Boy" but are so unbelievable in their language and interactions with each other that you sit there wondering who would talk like that, When watching the film I could only assume that the film was written by a woman as it felt more like a woman's interpretation of male relationships. as it turns out it was directed by Nanette Burstein and I would be interested in how much input she had over the dialog.

Not that this film was entirely without merit, simply that what merit it has is lost in the telegraphed gags and unrealistic performances, I would recommend this film only to a couple staying in and watching it on DVD, and even then only if they had already seen many of the plethora of very similar movies.