Age of Dinosaurs movie review

Age of Dinosaurs

Ever wonder what a cross between Die Hard and Jurassic Park would be like? Well, after seeing this, I can safely say… it looks like total freaking Tyrannosaurus diarrhea $hit!!!

Technically, this is ripping off 2 movies in one. How do I know this? Aside from it being obvious in the film itself, it says so right on the back of the DVD case! Look closely on the back.

Yeah.

I loved dinosaurs as a kid. I was obsessed with them back then, and I still have a soft spot for them now. So, if I watch a movie with dinosaurs in it, I expect a good amount of dinosaur action. But do you know what I love more than dinosaurs ripping people to pieces? Scientific accuracy. And some form of logic and realistic elements. If it’s a movie like 10 Million Years BC or Valley of Gwangi, then I can be lenient with the fantasy elements of it. But for nearly everything else, I can’t stand it.

Can I stand this movie? Judging from the intro paragraph of this review, I think it’s obvious. Age of Dinosaurs is amazingly stupid. Everything about this movie is undeniably, 100%, no question about it, no argument, no debate whatsoever… the epitome of STUPID. Watching it wasn’t much fun either.

The plot is like Jurassic Park… if Jurassic Park was written by monkeys snorting crack. And if the scientists and staff in the movie had no clue as to what they were doing. It could be said that InGen (from JP) had no clue either, but they were bounds smarter than the idiots here! Would the government of any country let dinosaurs be cloned on the mainland? In a heavily populated city? They didn’t even have their own testing labs, they just did all their work in hospitals. Well, they filmed in a hospital in the beginning, so that would be why. But the film’s sucky budget does not excuse the extreme stupidity.

On top of that, they don’t even have suitable enclosures for the dinosaurs at all. They just lock them in big cages, and at the end they have over 100 of them in these weird cloning pods. All in one single building. At least InGen cared for their animals. The company in this movie sucks. Take a moment to get a grasp on this situation, though. They are revealing over 100 dinosaurs to a massive press conference (which for some reason allowed civilians) in a single building, in the city of Los Angeles. Can you guess what happens? They all go wild. Wow. Nobody saw that coming. It also just so happens that the majority of all their dinosaurs are carnivores. Great.

The movie resembles Die Hard after the dinosaurs all break free. Instead of John McClane, we have a firefighter dad who was dumb enough to bring his teenage daughter to a dinosaur show, the CEO of the genetics company, some forgettable staff members, and cops who can’t do jack squat to help anybody. And instead of Hans Gruber and his team, we have some carnotaurs, a ceratosaurus (I think), some pterosaurs, and too many others to count. Sadly, Hans Gruber as a carnotaurus isn’t as cool or funny as it could be.

Pretty soon the dinosaurs break out of the building and run amok through Los Angeles. It is the most insane dinosaur action sequence I’ve ever seen in my life. Not the good kind of insane, the kind that confuses the mind and makes no sense. I know it’s a bad sci-fi film, but with certain movies, I can only suspend my disbelief for so long… not that it was ever suspended with this one to begin with. The craziest part is the stampede. Both carnivores and herbivores alike are running through the street in the same group. I highly doubt a ceratosaurus would be running along with a sauropod. I also don’t believe it when a freaking spinosaurus somehow manages to climb to the top of a skyscraper! It reminds me of the poster for Godzilla vs Megalon.

It doesn’t make sense. Another thing that ticks me off is how bullets do not affect the dinosaurs in any way. A swat team unloads all their ammo on ONE. SINGLE. BABY. CARNOTAURUS. And they don’t even pierce the skin! They keep saying their armor is too thick. I could understand it if they were shooting an ankylosaurus, but carnotaurs don’t have armor plating on nearly every square centimeter of their body like anky’s do.

There are also scenes where the actors aren’t even aiming at the dinosaurs. And the dinosaurs don’t unleash all their rage like you think they would, they barely do anything while getting shot! All they do is stand there and roar. Occasionally, they eat a guy, and since the director didn’t tell them what the CG models would be doing in some shots, the actors stare right past the dinosaur, or don’t notice their buddy getting clawed at.

There’s one part where a pterosaur flies so fast that its wing decapitates one of the cops! I’ll admit, that was cool. While I DO NOT think that could happen in real life (I could very well be mistaken), it was a neat moment.

Is there anything in the movie I did like? Or tolerate at the most? Yes. Despite the insanity, some scenes with all the chaos were slightly enjoyable. If it was a cartoon, or didn’t try to be serious in the slightest, I think we could have had an over the top, crazy little gem of a movie. I keep saying that the Asylum should use the stupidity of their movies to their advantage and make something crazy awesome. It would work! Trying to have even the slightest bit of seriousness with this stuff doesn’t go well.

It’s also hard to be serious with crappy effects. It’s not the worst of Asylum’s CG, but it could be better. While the detail and design of the dinosaurs is decent, the animation is awkward. There is no visual appeal. Puppets would work better. Just look at Godzilla X Mechagodzilla 3, and Tokyo SOS. They’re both great showcases for practical special effects, and they look amazing! Age of Dinosaurs did actually use a puppet for one scene in the beginning. It seemed a lot more believable than the CG in a lot of movies. More of that would be nice.

I’ll give it credit for almost decent CGI, but everything else about this movie is total garbage. It isn’t the worst Asylum movie. If you want to check it out for yourself, go right ahead. You’ll probably get a headache, turn it off and drink the battery fluids from your remote control, but that’s a lot less harmful than what you would do to rid yourself of the horrors of Atlantic Rim… or Transmorphers. Oh please no. Not Transmorphers. anything but that.

FINAL RATING: 5 / 50

STORY: 0 / 5

ACTING: 1 / 5

CHARACTERS: 0 / 5

CG/EFFECTS: 2 / 5

ACTION: 1 / 5

SOUNDTRACK: 0 / 5

TONE: 0 / 5

ENJOYABILITY: 1 / 5

REWATCH VALUE: 0 / 5

OWNING VALUE: 0 / 5

Well, now that I mentioned it, I might as well review Transmorphers. Ugh. If you don’t see a review from me ever again, that means I ripped my own leg off and bashed my brains out with it to spare me of the terrible, cruel, unholy abomination of a ‘movie’ that is… Transmorphers.