
While David's soaring ride aboard a Skybax isn't on a par with the dizzying sensations of "Spider-man," it's the closest "Dinotopia" gets to the magic it so desperately seeks.
DINOTOPIA MOVIE T REX FULL
The movie's admittedly marvelous special effects, engineered by the Jim Henson workshop, get full and sublime play in Part 2. rexes suddenly have turned savage and overstepped their boundaries. Try not to laugh when the Dinotopians are told "herds" of T. In an accompanying clumsy development, poor old Tyrannosaurus rex once again is cast as the villain. Dinotopia's live-and-let-live approach is upset not by the newcomers - that would be too thoughtful - but by a plot twist that has the island's source of energy arbitrarily giving out. Karl, David and Marion are set to learn different professions designed to overcome their deepest fears.
DINOTOPIA MOVIE T REX CODE
You'll avoid preachy recitations of a Dinotopian code apparently cobbled from New Age spiritual guides and back issues of Simple Life: "Sing every day," "Eat to live, don't live to eat," "Give more, take less" (unless it's a sweeps miniseries).īy Part 2, serious action threatens to occur. In "Dinotopia," tedious filler so consumes Part 1 that audiences should just skip it and begin watching on Monday night. Anyone confronted with a sweeps miniseries will try to calculate just where the padding was placed to turn a two-night epic into three. Karl and David also meet a rascally adventurer named Cyrus (David Thewliss) and a sylph-like young woman named Marion (Katie Carr) who will serve as educational muse and obligatory romantic foil for the movie's remaining 5 hours. It was nobody's fault," etc.), the bereaved brothers discover what looks like paradise or at least a place PETA would love: lassitudinous, vegan peaceniks living in harmony with stega-, steno- and almost every other saurus. Smart 10-year-olds will quickly miss the expert touch of a James Cameron or whoever directs those Mountain Dew commercials.Īfter some limp dialogue ("We did the best we could. It's also a harbinger of "Dinotopia's" greatest flaw: plodding, inadequate action sequences that barely raise your pulse. Karl (Tyron Leitso) and David (Wentworth Miller) attempt a fruitless rescue, then swim for their lives. In this version, two brothers in the desirable 18-to-24 demographic end up on Dinotopia after their small plane crashes into the sea, taking their father with it. The results show it's not easy mating fuzzy-wuzzy fantasy to hard-nosed adventure epic. Monday and Tuesday (KOMO-TV).īut ABC and its accomplices, Hallmark Entertainment and the famous Halmi team of producers, also have taken liberties with the original's plot.
DINOTOPIA MOVIE T REX MOVIE
The movie airs in two-hour installments at the family-friendly hours of 7 p.m. Quaintly worded text and an old-fashioned sense of curiosity and adventure accompany exquisite drawings of the inhabitants and landscapes.ĪBC accordingly has scheduled "Dinotopia" to cast a net for fans of all ages.

The "Dinotopia" novels have beguiled youthful readers and quite a few older ones with the Victorian-era saga of a father and son who discover an island of friendly dinos and pacifistic humans. Instead, the network will devote three nights beginning Sunday to the six-hour miniseries "Dinotopia," based on the lavishly illustrated and popular books by James Gurney. It's called "The Flintstones" and it first appeared 40 years ago.īut Bedrock is not the location a ratings-battered ABC cares to visit just now. Viewers of a certain age already know this place.
The daily trappings of existence bear a familiar resemblance to our own, with the astonishing exception that saurians have become pets, helpers, even small-business owners.

Imagine, if you will, a magical place where people and dinosaurs live in harmony.
