You'll avoid preachy recitations of a Dinotopian code apparently cobbled from New Age spiritual guides and back issues of Simple Life: 'Sing every day,' 'Eat to live, don't live to eat,' 'Give more, take less' (unless it's a sweeps miniseries).īy Part 2, serious action threatens to occur. In 'Dinotopia,' tedious filler so consumes Part 1 that audiences should just skip it and begin watching on Monday night. Anyone confronted with a sweeps miniseries will try to calculate just where the padding was placed to turn a two-night epic into three. Karl and David also meet a rascally adventurer named Cyrus (David Thewliss) and a sylph-like young woman named Marion (Katie Carr) who will serve as educational muse and obligatory romantic foil for the movie's remaining 5 hours.

It was nobody's fault,' etc.), the bereaved brothers discover what looks like paradise or at least a place PETA would love: lassitudinous, vegan peaceniks living in harmony with stega-, steno- and almost every other saurus. Smart 10-year-olds will quickly miss the expert touch of a James Cameron or whoever directs those Mountain Dew commercials.Īfter some limp dialogue ('We did the best we could. It's also a harbinger of 'Dinotopia's' greatest flaw: plodding, inadequate action sequences that barely raise your pulse. Karl (Tyron Leitso) and David (Wentworth Miller) attempt a fruitless rescue, then swim for their lives. In this version, two brothers in the desirable 18-to-24 demographic end up on Dinotopia after their small plane crashes into the sea, taking their father with it. The results show it's not easy mating fuzzy-wuzzy fantasy to hard-nosed adventure epic. Monday and Tuesday (KOMO-TV).īut ABC and its accomplices, Hallmark Entertainment and the famous Halmi team of producers, also have taken liberties with the original's plot. The movie airs in two-hour installments at the family-friendly hours of 7 p.m.

Quaintly worded text and an old-fashioned sense of curiosity and adventure accompany exquisite drawings of the inhabitants and landscapes.ĪBC accordingly has scheduled 'Dinotopia' to cast a net for fans of all ages. The 'Dinotopia' novels have beguiled youthful readers and quite a few older ones with the Victorian-era saga of a father and son who discover an island of friendly dinos and pacifistic humans. Instead, the network will devote three nights beginning Sunday to the six-hour miniseries 'Dinotopia,' based on the lavishly illustrated and popular books by James Gurney.

It's called 'The Flintstones' and it first appeared 40 years ago.īut Bedrock is not the location a ratings-battered ABC cares to visit just now. Viewers of a certain age already know this place. The daily trappings of existence bear a familiar resemblance to our own, with the astonishing exception that saurians have become pets, helpers, even small-business owners. Imagine, if you will, a magical place where people and dinosaurs live in harmony.

Dinotopia movie ending