Dinosaur Island (2002): A Film Review

Today's subject was watched a lot by me as a kid on the mythical format known as DVDs, an animated film with the rather generic title of Dinosaur Island, direcyed by Will Meugniot of Exo-Squad fame and released by defunct animation studio DiC.

Dinosaur Island's plot is about four teens being selected for a competitive reality show to win a million dollars, but the plane taking them to their destination crashes, and where they land is a lost world wehere dinosaurs still roa, ans must survive it.

Sound familiar? Supposedly this is is an adaptation of The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Camp Cretaceous to the latter's Jurassic World if you will.

Let's get the biggest problem out of the way with DI'02: the animation is not very good. DiC was infamous from its stiff and flat animation and art style, especially towards the end of its lifetime, and here the animation is very reflective of that. Everything moves relatively jerky, and the backgrounds aren't very detailed.

The editing is often off, rapidly cutting between scenes rapidly or these bits of the T. rex biting or zooming in on its eye.

But if you think that's bad, wait until you get a load of the designs. Hoo boy, you can see why I chose this for the subject of our Halloween special.

Seriously, they look like every one of them's on some narcotic and is grinning like a psychopath. They're not even fun from an innacuracy standpoint, as in mocking them.

The absolute nadir to me is the film's Tyrannosaurus rex, which is one of the worst I've ever seen. Just look at it! .... or don't. I'm so sorry I showed you it. I admit the red colour scheme is interesting, but that's literally the only good thing about it.

The requisite raptors for a work like these are not far behind. They're your usual bareskined or scaley, green ones who look like just about every other genericiraptor. Painfully generic, save for them swimming, something they aren't normally shown doing.

The Pteranodon are crap, being the bat-winged dragon kind. The feet bother me in particular: while it is surprisingly correct for them to walk on the soles, it wasn't three-toed, but four.

The Gallimimus have the seem evil grins, and have a weird diagonal stance. At least the red-cream pattern is nice. Yes they homage Jurassic Park in their scene, why do you ask?

Stegosaurus, which appears to confirm this indeed a Lost World  is pretty middle of the road, having a lot of the inaccuracies I'd expect (elephantine feet, olate arranged not unevenly). It's also IMO the most psycho-looking. I remember being unnerved by it even back then.

Triceratops is fairly standard for the time, and is pretty good by this work's low standards, save elephantine feet. I like the aggressive nature of it too.

The best of the designs is what I think is meant to be an Iguanodon, if only because its one of the less grostesque ones and looks like the real thing - or at least close to it. That isn't saying its good, however.

There are also a race of caveman in this, who act as antagonists. They're blue-skinned and treated as rimatives who kidnap one of the kids to sacrifice before being scared off by the rex. They're a bit menacing, but I'm not a fan of them.

So crappy accuracy aside, how does DiC's Dinosaurs measure otherwise?

I do admit, there is some character development that ensures some substance is in Dinosaur Island: the kids learn splitting up and being at each others throats, drilled into their heads by sporty kid Jackie, isn't going to keep them alive for long, especially when in the second act they split up but each encounter different dinos and get into heaps of scrapes.

The music is forgetable, as I can literally not name s single track save the reality show's theme song (which I thought was real as a kid). Meanwhile the sound design is a hodgepodge of every stock vocal: bear sounds,vultures, bull snorts, baby bear cries, the T. rex from Jurassic Park, you name it, it's in here, and needless to say there's barely anything original.

The action setpieces are okay, I guess, as are the character designs: the latter are evidently early 2000's. The acting is similarly justy passable. Nothing really bad, but nothing that's truly good, and at its worst the delievery is as flat as can be. Really, what am I expecting from a Made for TV/straight to DVD film? High values?

If I were in charge, I'd probably make the dinosaurs a lot more accurate and appealing to look at, but in addition would make most of the fauna actually native to South America (and a few from nearby Africa). Thus, T. rex becomes Giganotosaurus, Stegosaurus becomes Kentrosaurus, pterosaurs become Tropeognathus-style Ornithocheirids, and the raptors are replaced by the abelisaur Carnotaurus.

• Accuracy - 3/10
• Aging - 2/10
• Plot - 5/10
• Animation - 3/10
• Music - 2/10
• Storytelling - 5/10
• Rewatchability - 3/10

 

Overall, Dinosaur Island is not one of the better options in Palaeo-Fiction, and it wasn't even the biggest part of my childhood; I can't even watch it. Everything about it ranges from a bit tolerable to downright atrocious. I don't recommend it save for diehard completionists in both animation and Palaeo-media.

All that aside, I hope you have a happy, safe, Halloween!

Do the post seem a bit rushed and feel inomplete? Yeah, I admit there's some burnout going on with me. Next month, I promise things will be way better.