Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Walking With Dinosaurs

Walking With Dinosaurs is a 1999 miniseries composed of six featurettes that follow the computer-animated lives of various dinosaurs throughout the mesozoic, according to some of the latest dinosaur research available. The animation is very good, and the music is solid. Kenneth Branagh is incredibly stiff as the narrator. One of his great strengths as an actor is the ability to imbue Shakespearean lines with life, so that you feel people actually talk that way. Perhaps trying to sound scientific or impartial, he too often speaks with too little affect, and the effect is dreadful for an actor of his caliber. It doesn't help that the script is, overall, not terribly interesting; in fact, the script would have us believe that what's shown in the documentary is how dinosaurs actually lived, bred, and died, and not educated guesses based on the fossil record. I hate that.

Still, the guesses are reasonably good, and my 3 year-old enjoyed it.

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