Walking With Dinosaurs 3D

To avoid confusion with the BBC series, presented by Kenneth Branagh in 1999, 20th Century Fox has added 3D to the title. Wow - not!

By concentrating on a specific dino that roamed the Alaskan plains in the years before Inuits and big oil, the filmmakers have a problem. Where's the drama?

CGI animation reproduces the creatures that look like scraggy rhinos well enough but someone should have mentioned a script. Watching these lumbering beasts on a long walk from somewhere to somewhere else is exhausting. How do you stay awake?

A decision must have been made in the post pitch green lit production dept that the film should be aimed at children, not teens and certainly not growns. This explains the dialogue ("You haven't lived until you've had a dust bath") which comes with the accent and sensibility of a six-year-old Californian kid ("Hey, dad! That was awesome!!").

The story, for what it's worth, follows a baby dino and his brother into puberty and beyond as if they were boys from Santa Monica. The only thing missing is prom night.

A bird of no particular distinction acts as narrator and guide. For some reason he has a Mexican accent.

There is a forest fire that looks like a barbie mishap compared to the one in Bambi and the herd is attacked by long-legged predators like those scary raptors in Jurassic Park, except these aren't scary.

The best that can be said is cute; the worst that can be asked is why. Between the two lies an aching chasm of yawns.