DVD | Prehistoric Park

Rating: TBA
Duration: 288 mins.
Genre: Documentary, Nature, Science.
Actors: N/A.
Release Date: Available Now.

Extinction, apparently, doesn't have to be forever. At least that’s what the makers of Prehistoric Park will try and have you believe. The award winning directors of Walking with Dinosaurs (which I somehow missed seeing) are at it again, but this time they want you to believe the impossible.

You see, rather than just looking at dinosaurs and how they might have lived, we get to witness Nigel Marven, a bumbling, clueless man who gets to go back in time and rescue dinosaurs. That’s right, I did use the words ‘go back in time’ and ‘rescue dinosaurs’ in a review of a documentary. And it’s here that the whole thing is essentially flawed.

Rather than being content with wowing us with CGI and the latest discoveries of dinosaur behaviour, the producers want us to actually believe that they have gone back in time and rescued dinosaurs.

How they got the actors to act with out rolling around in fits of laughter is truly amazing – they are acting as if they have actually just rescued a T-Rex and now have it in captivity.

And if that’s not bad enough, when they do go back, they leave it to the very last possible moment in time, like the day before the meteorite that kills every living thing on earth – and thus whipping out the dinosaurs- hits… giving them the excuse for a little bit of suspense with the will they or won’t they make it back to the potable Stargate type portal factor.

But scoffing aside, Prehistoric Park is a visual treat, and does have a unique way of looking at what scientists now know about the long since extinct dinosaurs.

Food for thought:
If you had the opportunity to go back in time, would you use it to rescue an extinct animal?

Rent or Buy?
Prehistoric Park is too hard to call on the rent it or buy it scale. At 288 minutes you’d have to wait till it was an eight day hire, and to buy it you’d have to be a die hard dinosaur nutter.