Reviews

None of the dinosaurs have feathers.

OK, that's not really why I rated it so poorly. I made it 22 minutes through before I wanted to shut it off. To be fair, I suffered through the entire thing but I hated wasting every minute on this movie.

I'm a lover of dinosaurs, dinosaur lore, movies, and video games. This makes me pretty forgiving of bad movies because I'll like them because: dinosaurs. However, the quality of this movie was so bad I simply couldn't justify making a full purchase of it, even just for background fun while I played ARK: Survival Evolved.

Why? I despise the style of mixing real background landscapes or effects, such as desert rocks, or fireball blooms, with poor CGI dinosaur characters superimposed on it. It's ugly, plain and simple, and the clash between reality and dull grey or beige dinosaurs and other prehistoric characters is dull dull dull. And what's the purpose of a shaky cam? Why are we given headaches from eye strain over something that's animated?

The voice acting is phoned in. The character development is non existent. None of the characters grow or change. The personalities of characters met in the movie are shallow and superficial. The "family values" and forced ethics are about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the point where I felt it was meant to be a "christian values" brainwashing agenda. The jokes and "naughty talk" about mating and suchlike feel like something an Incel texts to a reluctant co-worker.

And let's just go with that music. Clashing, overbearing, constantly drowning out the dialog so that you can't hear what people are saying and you spend most of your time on the volume button raising and lowering the volume to compensate for being deafened by brass and woodwinds during "dramatic" moments. Some of the music feels like it's so condescending in a strange way, forcing a mood that cannot be carried through story or acting because they lack so much. I feel like I'm sitting here listening to someone talk baby talk to a three year old through the music score.

This feels like the kind of movie neglectful parents use to babysit their young children, then years later cannot understand why their kids are so stupid and emotionally stunted with an inability to focus on anything unless it's accompanied by explosions and participation trophies.

I live in Las Vegas. I watch my neighbors blow half their paychecks and burn every evening for the free drinks, "comps" like free gifts of garbage stuff they hoard in their garages of stuff they don't need or want, and coupons for money off their cheap buffet foods.

This episode really points out the trickery of gambling. All the "free" stuff people that get sucked into it think they are getting. And I think despite the lampoon and campy tone of the show, it's an important message, and I wish more people got the point of this one... gambling casinos are a con job, if only people would realize it.

So yeah, some of the guest actors are pretty bad. Yes, the story is campy and a strange twist on the mythology of King Midas. But is has a really good moral message to it, if only people had paid attention.

This movie would have at least been average, and an interesting drama, if it weren't for one thing.

The style of the movie is quiet, and understated. If anything, it's a bit flat. The characters speak in whispers constantly, and you find yourself adjusting the volume higher and higher to hear what they are hissing at each other. Often I would be leaning forward in my seat, literally drawn into the story and intensity of the situations.

Then, whoever directed this thinks it's a horror movie and does something dramatic and frightening with loud blaring music. It could be something so non-dramatic as a flashback of a face in the woman's memory, or a sudden unexpected reaction of a character like a slap to the face, and suddenly, that volume you've cranked up because you can't hear is deafening you and you are startled and jerking back in your seat.

This style is so incredibly distracting and distressing for a movie that is supposed to be a drama, I couldn't really focus on the actual story. It's almost like the people who made this film thought the emotions and mystery in the story weren't enough so they had to fabricate an illusion of roller coaster excitement to wake their audiences up with shock scores. It reminds me of Joseph Haydn's composition, "The Surprise".

So, because of this style, I felt it pretty much destroyed the entire movie for me. I wanted to admire it, at least because of Colin Firth and you know anything he's in would be good. But no, the horror movie scare tactics simply ruined the entire film, in my experience.