Age of Dinosaurs - Terror in L.A.

I expected not too much, after all it is a low budget movie in a genre defined by multi million dollar projects like Jurassic Park. But there are just tons of problems with this movie. The script is bad, the acting ranges from okay to bad, the effects are bad, the sound is bad. The script has a not very original story, no plot twists, but lots of logical errors. The effects are simply bad. As soon as any dinosaur moves more than just a little, the animations look like from a 90s computer game (close ups and slow movements actually look decent). The CG do not match the footage, it just looks like copied from another movie and dropped into this. The (way too many) explosions are better, but still no match for many 15-20 year old movies. The characters.... no development at all. I kinda liked the Chief, and Jade is cute, but wanted to just look away for all those embarrassing lines. Sound effects and music were okay, but in many dialogues you hear lots of clothes rustling on the lavalier microphones. And so many WTF moments. Why would a Stegosaur be standing on top of a skyscraper? Why would every helicopter pilot try to get within biting range?

Two stars for trying to make a movie, and failing I absolutely recommend that you do NOT watch this one.

Using breakthrough flesh-regeneration technology, a biotech firm creates a set of living dinosaurs. But when the creatures escape their museum exhibit and terrorize Los Angeles, a former firefighter must rescue his teenage daughter from the chaos brought on by the Age of Dinosaurs.

We have the benefit of a film starring Treat Williams ("Dead Heat") and Ronny Cox ("RoboCop"), but that is about the best thing you can say for this film. It is exactly what you expect, with such an obvious rip-off of "Jurassic Park" that I am surprised they even bothered to make it.

If you like the cheese that comes out of the Asylum, feel free to check out this piece of work. If not, avoid it. There is no way I am going to try to convince anyone to see this turkey.

A dinosaur rampage ! Not the most original idea for a movie but one that sounds like total and enjoyable nonsense , There might be a slight reservation to this and that is AGE OF DINOSAURS is being broadcast on the SyFy nearly every film you see on it is overly reliant on CGI and dumb scripting . That said the film does contain a couple of relatively well known cast members in the shape of Treat Williams and Ronny Cox and even if they're not Hollywood A listers at least it gives some hope for the movie

As Morgan Freeman said to Tim Robbins " Hope is a dangerous thing " and watching this film you know what he's getting at . Any hope that this would be an atypical SyFy channel movie are soon dashed . The dinosaurs are of course poor CGI realisation and one wonders how much fun it would have been working on this production ? " More fun than actually watching it " you cry and you'd probably be right . Once the dinosaurs make a breakout there's no internal logic on a narrative or mis-en-scene level . For example after the mad scientists and the greedy corporate capitalists have brought the reptiles back to life , they all make a beeline for the nearest cupboard because hiding in a cupboard is the only way to escape from a dinosaur . The production team realising that the audience tuned in to see on screen dino carnage try and get around this by introducing spectacle but you end up thinking maybe hiding in a cupboard best suited the story . As the terrible lizards charge down a busy LA street it's obvious this has been achieved by randomly filming an everyday street scene and generating CGI dinosaurs on to the footage . Words fail to convey how unconvincing all of this is as a cyclist peddles down the street not noticing there's a giant T-Rex a few feet away from him . The dinosaurs for some reason then attack a shopping and the first time the shoppers realise there's a lizard attack is when they're on the dino-menu . Considering the time frame involved and that there's a news copter flying around you'd think the shoppers would have been forewarned by someone calling them on their cell phones telling them what's happening . This type of clumsy ignorance is typical of the film but it does contain at least one sensible thinking when the media warn everyone to remain indoors and not to venture out in to the streets which of course negates the production team having to film scenes with lots of extras

No, really. I knew it was going to be bad. Really bad. I mean, a low budget movie about dinosaurs roaming around in LA is going to be bad. You know it's going to rip off ideas and scenes from Jurassic Park. Of course it is... because that's THE benchmark for dinosaur movies. And it's going to be a clone of all the disaster/horror/animals at large movies ever made. If you're like me, you're completely aware of this going in. In fact, you crave a good Cheese-fest B-movie. But no matter how low your expectations are, this movie was still worse.

Considering how far the CG industry has come since Jurassic Park, which was 20 years ago now, I have what I consider a reasonable expectation of monster SFX to be. This wasn't that good. I mean, they actually failed to match 20 year old tech, or apparently develop any kind of realistic motion models. The flying dinos look like claymation. The matting is horrid, with poorly rendered CG dinos clearly not even remotely matching the background.

Nah, there's no redemption. And yet, many will watch this on Netflix because it's there. So if you're checking this review prior to watching, take your lowest expectations and drop them one or two levels.

It's absolutely insane that there can be this many people in the industry who have access to the means of making a movie, but still have no idea how to make a movie. Bad script, bad acting, bad CG, bad music, bad sound FX, bad audio mixing, bad foley, bad continuity, bad makeup, bad costumes, bad lighting, almost every aspect is bad, which is why you'll want to watch it for the cheese factor.

This Asylum flick has all the clichés of a good old fashioned low budget TV movie: cowardly scientists that play god, greedy corner cutting businessman bully, innocent and completely stupid teenager girl, action figure concerned father, brave American cops, Ronny Cox (a cliché all of his own), rapacious dinosaurs and really dumb special effects.

Now, I didn't really expect anything else, but frankly I felt offended by the messages in this film. You should never be arrogant, innovative or bold. Stay in your place like so many female characters in the film. If you are a teenager you are dumb. Not just dumb, retarded (in the scientific sense, not the jargon one). If you are a woman, you are helpless. No measure of protection will help you from what you fear will happen. Glass will always break, even if it is cutting edge rocket one. You can do anything to protect your children, including killing priceless dinosaurs and trying to run away from them by going inside the city, so they can kill other people as well; corollary: being a concerned parent trumps any other motivation. Always use extreme violence when threatened: bring the cops and military if possible and shoot bullets into animals rather than call animal control specialists with tranquillizers. Oh, and if you try to revive the dinosaurs, do it en masse, all species, as big as possible, before you announce it to the world in a small building with no TV coverage and let them escape.

Bottom line: this film wasn't just bad, it was offensive and completely stupid. Treat Williams and Ronny Cox rarely play in masterpieces of cinema, but this was just too much. Not even bad enough to be funny.