Sometimes I’m lazy, but I’d like to post something. Luckily, I have a bit of back catalogue from other wonderful places that are awesome enough to let me write for them. Today, it’s my review of Dinotopia from Green Man Review. As always, clicky on the hyperlink-ed title for the entire review!
Dinotopia
(Hallmark Home Entertainment, 2002)
Admit it. Everyone has had a palaeontologist phase. You know, the point in your young life where dinosaurs take up every moment of your waking hour. You’ve got the stuffed ones, the plastic ones, the ones that decorate your bed sheets. For me, it happened when I was about two or three years old, when my father took me to see their giant skeletons in the National Museum of Natural History. The tyrannosaurus rex fascinated me, but I was a real sucker for those tiny little dawn horses. Which lead perfectly into my horsie phase, but that’s another story for another time.
Dinotopia began as a series of best selling books by James Gurney. They were praised for their lavish illustrations, but not exactly known for their plot structures. With this shaky start, the producers created a three-day miniseries and hoped that the dinosaurs, computerized and animatronic, would make up for the lack of story. They didn’t quite succeed.
Karl and David Scott are half-brothers who not only don’t know each other very well, they don’t like what they do know. During a vacation with their father, the three of them are involved in a plane crash that ends up washing the brothers onto an island populated with humans and Saurians (dinosaurs). They meet Marion, daughter of the current matriarch of Dinotopia and heir apparent, who tells them about the alliance with herbivorous (or as I like to think of them, non-threatening) dinosaurs. While David seems to adapt well to their new home, Karl wants nothing more than to go back home. Things change, however, when the sunstones, large diamond-like gems that protect Dinotopians from attack by carnivores, begin to dim. How they work isn’t really explained, but it is up to the boys to attempt a trip to The World Beneath to get more of them in order to save the lives of everyone they have come to know.
Atomic Fangirl 