Prehysteria!

If you are a six-year-old boy who's into dinosaurs, you will love this movie. If you are anybody else, you'll be rolling your eyes about every 15 seconds. If you want to start picking on things like the acting, the special effects, the dialogue, or the absence of a coherent plot that makes even the slightest amount of sense, you'll have plenty of material. If all you want is a safe dinosaur fantasy movie for your kid, it will do just fine. That said, there's a lot of kids' entertainment out there that's much smarter, and some of it is even bearable or enjoyable for adults. Unless your child is in an uncompromising dinosaur mood, you're probably better off looking for something else.

In one sense, I kind of liked this movie because of a 'mindless', positive atmosphere it sort of conveys. I had a problem with an aspect of the plot, but more about that later. First, the characters were a little goofy and one dimensional. The 'good people' had similar physical and character traits and the 'bad people' had similar physical and character traits ... hmmm. The basic storyline was OK (pretty simple and standard) - nothing too exciting or objectionable. The main attraction was, of course, the miniature dinosaurs - kind of a nice fantasy element to have. However, they had a very minimal presence in the movie.

Outside of that, the movie kept a brisk pace and didn't get too bogged down in any one place. I liked this about the movie.

The problem I had with the plot had to do with the the idea of "stealing". I think this movie may not have been thought out enough - something's wrong especially if this is a kid's movie. I'll keep the next sentence abstract to not be a spoiler (skip it if you're worried). The 'good guys' do some stealing and they don't have the same info the audience has - so it's just stealing and that's kind of a bad thing for a kid's movie.

Overall, if you have kids, because of a questionable plot aspect I'd consider passing. However, this whole movie is pretty low key anyway so it may not matter. Pass this one if you have any other interesting choices.

Every character in this film is detestable. The dialogue is just constant bickering. When the family is arguing in the car I just wanted them to all start pushing each other out into the road. No one is even remotely likable. Every characters IQ is far below 70. You keep asking yourself, "Why can't the dinosaurs grow full size and just eat all these people???"

With that said, there is one redeemable quality to this movie. If you like to have a laugh at bad movies (Mystery Science Theater 3000, Rifftrax, etc..) then this could be a good option. If you have a kid obsessed with dinosaurs I guess they might find it interesting, although doubtful.

This film doesn't warrant the character limit required for this review and so to pad it out I will touch upon the top three memorable scenes in this movie. Spoiler alert.. there aren't any.

We do movie night with my son (8) most weekends. He's always been into dinosaurs and I recognized the kid from Last Action Hero on the poster art. So I thought this would be a fun one for him. I was mistaken.

I can ignore generally bad acting in family movies. This however has a plethora of other major issues. Why are there multiple weird sexual situations and conversations? Why are there unironic threats of gun violence and murder? Why is the dad a total d*ckweed to everyone? But beyond that, it lacks adventure and anything even remotely pushing the plot along. This should really be called "jerky widowed dad yells at kids while he chases after a new girlfriend, while also grunting at her a lot."

The basic premise of the film, family accidentally discovers baby dinosaurs, is an easy setup for something good, but it's never delivered on. The Last Action Hero kid dancing to Elvis is truly the highlight of the film. Skip this one. Go watch We're Back, Journey to the Center of the Earth, or the Flintstones movie. All exponentially better family films.

People can say that this was a bad movie, but I completely disagree. I thought that it was cute, although the dinosaur effects could've been better (ever see Jurassic Park?). Well, they wanted the movie to be cute and seem harmless, so they couldn't give the same vicious effects as "Jurassic Park". This movie is great, if you like animal movies (with dogs or cats) you might not like this movie, but if you like family-oriented comedies and dinosaurs, you might like it. I liked it, and I hope that somebody else does too.