Paseando con los Hombres de las Cavernas

As a child I grew up watching and loving the BBC's "Walking With..." series, however Walking With Cavemen was the one entry I never got to watch on TV. I didn't even know the show existed until I saw the official book in a museum gift shop. Almost 20 years later I finally decided to check it out.

Walking With Cavemen is very different to the other shows in the series.

To begin with the show isn't narrated by Kenneth Branagh but is instead presented by Robert Winston who also appears in person to interact with the prehistoric humans, similar to the Nigel Marven specials Chased by Dinosaurs and Sea Monsters. Winston does an okay job but he lacks the adventurous energy of Nigel Marven. Photos have surfaced showing that Marven was actually originally intended to present the American version of the show which makes me wonder why he was not used to begin with.

The second big difference is that the show does not use CGI animation (aside from a few reused shots from Walking With Beasts) but instead uses actors in make-up to portray the primitive humans. This works fine for the more humanoid hominids but for the more apelike hominids the costumes look cheesy and ridiculous at best and unsettling and creepy at worst. As a result many of the early hominids have incorrect proportions and are a bit too humanlike in their movements.

Also notably missing is Benjamin Bartlett's trademark score which gave the other shows in the series their epic feel. Cavemen's score is fine enough and does it's job but lacks the same emotional punch as those of the other series.

Overall Walking With Cavemen is a decent series that's very informative but lacks the same level of production quality and feeling as the rest of the series. It feels more like a low budget spin-off than it does an official entry in the series but it's still worth checking out.

Like a lot of people I was impressed with the previous "walking with" achievements. This one mostly uses real people and has a whole different feel to it. The acting is superb and you'll forget you're watching people in makeup and hairy suits. That said, there seems to be a constant problem with productions that portray early human ancestors. I guess there's a tendency to think ancient means crude and sloppy, and that's the way these beings are shown. Think brutish as in "Quest for Fire". Somehow I think smashing an egg in your hand and getting only a bit of it, stumbling around and wasting energy or wearing furs in the cold that look like they''ll fall off in a slight breeze isn't the way these guys survived to become you and me. Probably it's meant to show how different thay were from us, but I hope future attempts might use a little more imagination. Worth a look though.

One Star. That's all this documentary deserves. I haven't felt this disappointed in watching a movie, let alone a documentary, in quite some time.

I'm a BIG fan of the "Walking With..." series, including it's Nigel Marvin spin-offs, for all their gleeful fun yet informative information. And although the subject of prehistoric man has never interested me nearly as much as other prehistoric creatures, the subject is still interesting and unique to explore. Having seen all the other docs from the series, I figured I need to see this one as well, especially after seeing relatively good reviews in other places.

Well for those of you who put up a good review of this doc... what were you thinking?! lol.

Though the information that they were able to get through was interesting, the presentation failed in every other way possible. It had a terrible flow, was incredibly unfocused in what it was trying to say (with information scrambled and sometimes out of of place), horrible effects (that includes the few moments of CGI and especially the makeup effects), and overused MTV-style camera effects.

Speaking of the makeup effects, one reviewer here mentioned how laughable the scene was when the cavemen come across this giant ape and how it looks a lot like a 70s man-in-suit horror movie. Well there are plenty of moments just like that were the people portraying the ape men looked ridiculous and acted ridiculous. None of this is helped by horrible camera positions and compositions.

The worst part of all is none of it is shown in an interesting or dynamic way, or looks remotely real. It doesn't even look like it was taken seriously. It also lacked any emotional punch that the predecessors of the series had. Remember the episode in "Walking With Dinosaurs" of the fate of the Ornithochirus (sp?)? That episode still gets me on the verge of tears every time I watch it. It's this sort of engagement with the subject that lacks here most of all. When you are more engaged in the subject and it's own personal story, even one that is just speculation, you care more about the facts surrounding it.

The only saving graces of this production are the fairly good narration (at least in the BBC version I saw) and the music. Otherwise, DO NOT bother even renting this one unless you want to have a good laugh (which I did frequently, but usually followed by rolling eyes). This does not belong on the shelf with the other "Walking With..." docs.

And does it make sense to learn that this doc was NOT produced or directly involved with the same people who did the others in the series? Hmmm...

The good is easy to describe. There's some great content here. Winston is a decent narrator. The episodes are well paced and there's plenty of educational content.

However, of the "walking with..." series, this is the one I enjoy the least. The reasons are (1) the acting of the primates is frequently weak and the makeup (eg. The ears) are always wrong. This is quite distracting and the illusion is frequently broken. (2) The facts are often speculative, eg. Primates started to walk upright for "sex"? Maybe, we walked upright to climb steep terrain + navigating through deep water with children + an increased ability to reach more food in the tree tops? Also, we have buried our dead for probably 500,000 years or more.

Overall, it's a good series. There are some interesting moments and some great theories. It's definitely worth the watch.

This show could have been great, since human evolution is a very interesting topic. This series should have followed the style and storytelling of the other Walking with... series, like the title promised (though I know it wasn't made by the original team, but it surely follows some elements of those series - the same CG models for example). Every other entry in the series shows the ecosystem around the "protagonist" of the episode. With this narrative, we can dive into the prehistoric world in more detail. This series could have featured great moments with our ancestors and other creatures interacting. Fighting off sabre-tooth cats, coming face-to face with Deinotheriums, cave bears etc. Without the ecosystem, the series feels dry. Instead, we got a ridiculous Gigantopithecus and a few shots of Megaloceros and mammonths. I almost hate this series, it's just feels so uncanny and unpleasant to watch.