A Era dos Dinossauros

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

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.

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.

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.