"Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia" is a 40-minute IMAX documentary from 2007, so this one has its 10th anniversary. This Canadian film is probably the most known work by writer and director Marc Fafard until now. The subject becomes very clear from the title already: it's all about dinosaurs and this means as well that you fill see a great deal of animation and visual effects in here. The latter got the film even a relatively prestigious award nomination. As a whole, I believe this is a decent achievement in terms of both what you see, the visual side, and what you hear, the informative side. I did not find it as distracting as on other occasions that there were more than one narrator, perhaps because of the scientist's accent. The combination of scientist and star is one that is not too uncommon in IMAX documentaries. The known name here is (fittingly with the production country) Canadian 2-time Golden Globe winner Donald Sutherland. As a whole, this was a fairly good watch. Nothing really outstanding and worth seeing (at least) once. I give it a thumbs-up.
3 Reviews
Solid documentary, does exactly what you'd expect
Horst_In_Translation19 August 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Drab Imax attraction.
Mozjoukine4 September 2007
DYNOSAURS - GIANTS OF PATAGONIA is a big brother of those underfunded educational movies teachers used to feed through sixteen millimeter projectors. The factual content is intriguing - monster footprints surviving to our own time, the world as one land mass with one ocean - but the presentation lacks energy.
The CG animation is cut-price unconvincing in the wake of the JURASIC PARK movies. The attempt to involve us in the one critter, followed from an egg, fails because the creature has no personality, as well as not being plausible. The helicopter footage is imposing in 3D but a lot of the scenics appear to have no depth and the effects shots, showing activity reflected on the lenses of glasses self consciously placed or on a lap top screen, don't add anything of value to the texture. There's lots of snapping at the camera.
The admirable Donald Sutherland's commentary could have been delivered by the science master to much the same effect.
Time was when IMAX attractions were an event outing. The producers were able to suggest that making them was an exciting activity and La Geode had the great pre-show running on the inside of it's Buckmaster Fuller dome. I miss that.
The CG animation is cut-price unconvincing in the wake of the JURASIC PARK movies. The attempt to involve us in the one critter, followed from an egg, fails because the creature has no personality, as well as not being plausible. The helicopter footage is imposing in 3D but a lot of the scenics appear to have no depth and the effects shots, showing activity reflected on the lenses of glasses self consciously placed or on a lap top screen, don't add anything of value to the texture. There's lots of snapping at the camera.
The admirable Donald Sutherland's commentary could have been delivered by the science master to much the same effect.
Time was when IMAX attractions were an event outing. The producers were able to suggest that making them was an exciting activity and La Geode had the great pre-show running on the inside of it's Buckmaster Fuller dome. I miss that.
Great educational movie
lisa_zap13 December 2007
I really enjoyed this movie and have seen it twice (I'd see it a third time, but I believe this is the last week it will be playing. It was a great film for the entire family: I didn't have to worry about inappropriate violence (the food chain is part of nature, so that's okay, and even in this respect the movie was quite tame), and the whole family learned some really interesting things. I was very impressed by the computer graphics, especially the quetzalcoatl. One thing I would have liked to see was a map of what the world looked like at the time, including the location of what is now Patagonia (and my two year old wanted to see T. rex, but he doesn't quite have a grasp on geography). I would love to see more films like this!
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