Age of Dinosaurs

This was bad on a Jurassic scale. Given it is a movie from The Asylum, then at least we as the audience have an ounce of hope that this might just be one of those movies that stand out from the rest of the movies that they spew out. But no. I must say that given the cover/poster for the movie, I had my hopes up just a little bit, but when I saw THE ASYLUM on the screen as the movie started, all hopes evaporated like dew before the rising sun.

The idea was pretty much everything that was used in the "Jurassic Park" movies; dinosaurs have been brought back to life by the hands of humans with the help of technology and research. And of course, these dinosaurs break free of their captivity and wreck havoc on a major city - in this case Los Angeles.

Right, almost textbook page by page copy from "Jurassic Park", well, and then exposed to The Asylum. What could possibly go wrong?

I will say that the dinosaurs as CGI animated creatures were actually quite alright. However, when they brought in the prosthetics and puppets it just went from alright to oh-so-wrong. These non-CGI animated dinosaurs were such an eyesore that it was downright embarrassing to watch. Especially the scene with the pteranodon in the helicopter. Look at the beak when it is CGI animated and then look at the difference in texture and color even when it is a real prosthetic used. It was just so bad.

Story-wise, then "Age of Dinosaurs" was nowhere near as interesting as "Jurassic Park", and chances are that if you have seen any of the "Jurassic Park" movies and enjoyed them, then you don't really want to spend 88 minutes on this movie. The story was as plain, predictable and textbook material as they come.

And what about the title itself, "Age of Dinosaurs"? Wouldn't that actually indicate a period of time spanding more than a single day? Well, I guess the title was just about as good as the actual movie was.

Regarding the acting in the movie, well, nothing overly interesting here. You have TV pseudo-legend Treat Williams, but he is barely making it watchable. And then there was Ronny Cox, which was actually nice to see, though this is not one of his best movies, not by a long shot.

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.

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.

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.

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