Age of Dinosaurs

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.

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.

Terrible CGI, terrible acting, terrible plot! The film is so repetitive- find my daughter, found her, oh damn, lost her again! Time to find her again! Rinse and repeat.

A defense for the awful CGI may be 'They had a low budget' in that case, they should have never made the movie! Simple as that! I wouldn't mind if this movie didn't exist because they had no budget.

We could have had a good movie with bad CGI, but the crew weren't trying! No movie screams 'We don't give a crap' more than this one! It just reeks of disinterest more than any film I've ever seen!

Also, as far as I'm concerned, being a firefighter doesn't mean being in the military! So I don't understand why our main character is such an expert with guns and fighting simply through putting out fires!

Generally I have an immense dislike for The Asylum's movies, but some are watchable so I do keep watching as there is something about their awfulness that is kind of compelling. There is much worse from The Asylum than Age of Dinosaurs and it is certainly better than SyFy's Jurassic Attack aka Rise of the Dinosaurs, but that isn't saying much to praise it. The best asset is the acting, not great but not that bad for The Asylum. Treat Williams and Ronny Cox look very at ease in their roles and are solid. There are a few non-entities in some of the bitty roles but overall the acting could have been worse. The music score also wasn't so bad, it does move things forward a little, doesn't distract and I can still remember parts, again it's improved from past efforts. I cannot say the same for the rest of Age of Dinosaurs(what an inane title) though. It is a very cheap movie visually, the editing is as choppy as you'd expect from The Asylum with scenes not fitting seamlessly together, you'll also have a field day spotting continuity errors. Even worse are the special effects for the dinosaurs, they move so awkwardly and they are designed in a way that makes them look like a failed high school project from 25-30 years ago. The dialogue has layers of cheese and sounds like the actors were having difficulty uttering it with any natural feeling. A lot of the lines are clichéd and any banter has a tendency to go overboard. The story reads of a dumbed down parody of both Jurassic Park and King Kong, but with none of the charm or thrills. Instead it is utter stupidity and predictable storytelling, with cartoon-ish, unimaginative attacks and tedious pacing. It is also very thin from a structural point of view, there isn't enough to sustain the length and make it up there is a lot of pointless filler that only succeeds in bogging the movie down. The characters are as clichéd as the writing, they are also very annoying and as well as having no development are made to do things that a lot of people would deem embarrassing. The dinosaurs also have no personality whatsoever and judging from people's reactions to them they don't seem to come across as much of a threat. On the whole, I've seen worse but if you are looking for a good or entertaining dino movie you are best leaving Age of Dinosaurs uncovered. 3/10 Bethany Cox

How on earth they got Treat Williams and Ronny Cox to do this movie is an amazing feat. This movie is of course essentially a rip off of Jurassic Park: The Lost World - well... the final two reels anyhow. Unfortunately, the script is so horrible. (If you were a fireman, standing holding an ax, and a dinosaur was in the process of tearing into somebody 4 feet away from you, wouldn't you at least take a swing, instead of standing there for five seconds with a bored look on your face?)

The visual FX are OK for this movie. They are about one generation from being 'done' as the dinosaurs didn't seem to blend in with the lighting from scene to scene, but not entirely distracting. The "script" is just so bad, that is really what takes you out of the movie. Although, I wonder if there was any writing forethought at all, and if this really wasn't just an exercise in improv, then having the effects done to suit the filmed improv. Visually, this movie was a touch better than a similar movie called Carnosaur (1993), though this is twenty years later in the technology for the FX.

The reason for the two stars is simply because the visual FX were at times OK. And I did appreciate the fact that when the dinosaurs tear into people, they didn't feel the need to show the actual teeth tearing the flesh. There were cutaways where you only saw the blood splatter - reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock's style.

The Mythbusters once proved that "you can polish a turd", however in this case, the script is a turd that probably couldn't be polished with out a few more rewrites - or a burning the first draft, and restarting all together.