Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure

'Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure', here a 40 minute short film rather than a series or feature length, could have worked. It should have worked as the potential was hardly small. The subject did sound very interesting, though not an expertise area of mine by any stretch (something that will either be fascinating for people or turn them off). As did the idea of mixing computer generated animation for the animals undergoing this adventure with the inclusion of live action human scenes.

Unfortunately, 'Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure' came over as a very uneven and disjointed documentary. Few of the individual elements are done awfully, but few of them are done exceptionally. When it comes to comparing the animals scenes and the live action ones, one of two is done very well indeed despite imperfections. The other however falls completely flat. So 'Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure' interests but also disappoints.

Am going to start with the good. Mostly 'Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure' looks good. It's beautifully shot, the scenery is even more eye catching (as ought underwater is both beautiful and uncompromising, showing its wonder or danger without trivialising or being too sugary) and most of the graphics impress, the CGI is fine. The animals themselves are incredible, whether prey or predator, cute or menacing, big or small their personalities really do shine.

The footage with them is compelling and has a wide range of emotions, the story was investable emotionally and involved. The narration is engaging and informative (did find myself learning a lot and wanting to research more), as well as well delivered. Not jokey or over-serious, neither does it over-explain or manipulate.

Not everything works sadly. While the production values are mostly impressive, it's not so good when close up. Close up the animals have a fake look, especially with the 3D which also struck me as overused and not necessary. The music agreed is ill fitting and never gels with the action, like it was lifted from something else and inserted in.

Where 'Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure' most falls down is in the live action scenes. They were pretty dull and just had little to them that was interesting or investable. And then there was the acting, the actors did not look as though they wanted to be there. Structurally, it felt very disjointed. The constant back and forth was distractingly jumpy and almost gimmicky. It would have been better if most of the documentary was the animals' journey and the live action scenes were bookended.

In summary, watchable but uneven. 5/10.

I am very surprised by the fact that the most accurate paleontology documentary of the 2000s was not among any of the famous dinosaur documentaries, but was actually a documentary about Mesozoic sea reptiles. Now I've seen a lot of negative comments in the reviews, but I must disagree.

First of all, while the actors' segments that play the paleontologists may seem distracting, this is actually an aspect much better than most dinosaur documentaries that just present speculation as facts (Walking with Dinosaurs and even the most recent Prehistoric Planet); now of course, that's not exactly a bad thing (since the non-avian dinosaurs were already gone now so there needs to be certain assumption to fill our gap in understanding), but when making these kinds of documentaries, I believe the producers must make clear how realistic and how much of the material presented in this documentary is real. This documentary finds a perfect solution to that by having actors playing out paleontology segments, which provides context to the speculation of certain scenes and is there to educate the audience about the ecological aspect of each animal (i.e. Xiphactinus eating Gillicus, how much of a generalist feeder a Tylosaurus was, etc.). It just shows how thoroughly researched this documentary is, and you'll be amazed by how accurately the discoveries are represented (once you search about each article regarding the discoveries showcased in this documentary).

And while some even said the music was bad, I believe that's because they've expected a grandiose score that you'd oftenly hear in BBC documentaries. Personally I don't find any problem at all and really the music when the sharks appear and whenever the Tylosaurus is present onscreen is just top notch. Animations and narration? They're pretty decent. If you think the animations are bad, that pretty much applies to every dinosaur documentary before Prehistoric Planet to be honest (yes, even Walking with Dinosaurs is very dated by todays standards). Like literally no people other than the reviewers in IMDb were this critical regarding this movie, which kind of bothers me.

Anyway, I give this movie a 10/10 for the reasons above. If you're a dinosaur/paleontology documentary fan, don't let the negative reviews miss out this masterpiece. It definitely would not disappoint you.

Sea Monsters features a story of a family of Dolichorhynchops ("long-nosed face") - a type of plesiosaurs - living out their lives in the inland sea of what is now North America. The film begins with the Dollie mother giving birth and nurturing her two young in the safer near-coastal shallows, but eventually the trio takes to deeper waters to follow the migrating fish. Wonders and dangers await.

Narrative: very decent. The concept of following one family works well, and ultimately serves to provide food for thought and empathy. What doesn't work well is that the doc flips back to 20th century paleontologists (played by actors, mostly) studying the protagonists' fossil bones every few minutes. This is done so frequently that it's distracting.

Graphics: I'm gonna say "good". The animation of the marine beasts is a little too glossy and artificial-looking, - going for drama rather than realism, - but the lighting is dynamic and captivating, the movements fluid and exciting, and the overall artwork - lush and detailed. So the somewhat unrealistic-looking animals didn't bother me much.

The music is cheap... discount-Disney-style... and usually doesn't fit well.

Overall: the Sea Monsters and Walking with Monsters episodes of BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs series appealed to me more... but if you enjoy this subject, the present doc is 40 minutes fairly well-spent. 6/10.

We just viewed Sea Monsters in Real D 3-D and it is exceptional. The plot tracks "Dolly" (the main character) on her life long journey. The word Monster in the title is a bit deceiving as most of the creatures are the sea form of dinosaurs. The 3 D experience is absolutely outstanding. I found that sitting toward the front of the theater produced the best 3 D experience. This movie may be a little intense for small children but all other ages will love it. The one positive thing for children is the forty minute run times that seems to fly by. National Geographic should have a hit on their hands as more and more people travel back in time to check out the Sea Monsters.

Watching "Sea Monsters" at the Omnimax was a real letdown. The film was woefully dull, its creators believing that a reel's worth of CG-animated water creatures is enough to carry a film. The few acting segments were stilted, and there was virtually no storyline to hold my interest. There was a lot of potential in the subject matter, but it would've been better at half the running time, or as a small chunk of a larger topic. The only real highlight of the film was an interesting song by Peter Gabriel that ran over the end credits. The animation itself was artificial, and it seemed that we saw the same sequences played out repeatedly.