Age of Dinosaurs (2013)

Expecting something lame from Asylum is natural; but this dinosaur movie is not totally lame, but close. Justin(Ronny Cox)is the CEO of the GenetSharp corporation that has discovered "flesh-regeneration technology". Since he's the head honcho, why not try it on his own crippled legs. Success leads to the bright idea of bringing back dinosaurs with only a single sample of DNA. Ex-firefighter Gabe Jacobs(Treat Williams) and his teenage daughter Jade(Jillian Rose Reed)manage tickets to a ceremony showing off living dinosaurs at a GeneteSharp auditorium with protective precautions in place. Guess what? The experiment goes awry and over a dozen dinosaurs break free, with the audience becoming the prey of prehistoric predators. If that is not enough, the creatures get loose from the building and now the citizens of Los Angeles join the chaos. The CGI has plenty of room to be better, but how high can your standards be for a B monster flick? Also in the cast: Arthur Richardson, Max Aria, Joshua Michael Allen, Julia Paul and Jose Rosette.

How on earth they got Treat Williams and Ronny Cox to do this movie is an amazing feat. This movie is of course essentially a rip off of Jurassic Park: The Lost World - well... the final two reels anyhow. Unfortunately, the script is so horrible. (If you were a fireman, standing holding an ax, and a dinosaur was in the process of tearing into somebody 4 feet away from you, wouldn't you at least take a swing, instead of standing there for five seconds with a bored look on your face?)The visual FX are OK for this movie. They are about one generation from being 'done' as the dinosaurs didn't seem to blend in with the lighting from scene to scene, but not entirely distracting. The "script" is just so bad, that is really what takes you out of the movie. Although, I wonder if there was any writing forethought at all, and if this really wasn't just an exercise in improv, then having the effects done to suit the filmed improv. Visually, this movie was a touch better than a similar movie called Carnosaur (1993), though this is twenty years later in the technology for the FX.The reason for the two stars is simply because the visual FX were at times OK. And I did appreciate the fact that when the dinosaurs tear into people, they didn't feel the need to show the actual teeth tearing the flesh. There were cutaways where you only saw the blood splatter - reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock's style.The Mythbusters once proved that "you can polish a turd", however in this case, the script is a turd that probably couldn't be polished with out a few more rewrites - or a burning the first draft, and restarting all together.

Had to sit through this for a bit since some friends wanted to get silly! At the end we were depressed and sorry, very sorry, and for a bunch of all different motives, curiously enough! Well, I was sad ( beside the point that Asylum is still making Z grade pictures and still going strong, how/why? ) to see a truly aged and uninspired, almost desperate looking, Treat Williams once and not too long ago, a star capable of exemplary, and even though at times underrated formidable performances ( think Milos Forman's strong "Hair" and Sidney Lumet's very, very good "The Prince of the City" and many more always at least respectable International films, where the actor always would bring his raw manliness and, never less than compelling talent!) while here he's practically deconstructed, abused, and badly photographed in a way that is indecent and almost moving and unnerving at the same time: his material is again Z grade but there are actors able to convey some to such inexplicable products ! Not Mr. Williams and certainly not, all the rest of this embarrassingly amateurish, poorly directed cast, typical faces of the shady D to Z Grade Hollywood's film industry sad underground belly. What to make of this? I don't know, I just know that nobody made it to the end , and , we strictly avoided even just talking or making a joke about such sad experience for the whole rest of the evening, as if it hadn't been enough of a nuisance, and so horribly jeopardized by just such a low, lowest general level, something I could only define like a caricature of a bad movie, really I could not call this even some cheap little show, more like a misfire of very sad and timely proportions! Everything was beyond unacceptable, even the lousy Cgi, and, I'd rather not say about the writing, and, directing, lensing, and sets, because it could get way too bitter and offensive! Best to laid them all to rest in the shelve of time holding the forgotten crap made in Films, and also with a true hope: that is that sooner than later, Asylum successfully will abandon this miserable and excruciating failure in filmmaking ( even that of bad filmmaking!) and, all of a sudden, embrace a new business, maybe in the butchery or debauchery jamboree of much lighter weight fare,something carrying way lower more manageable by them responsibilities and eyes, intents and education they obviously so awfully lack of in this Industry! Maybe, even more engagingly remunerative since it would appear these budgets are always so laughably spent! I don't see one reeding quality here, just one: stay away from this garbage, please !!! Stop making such bad movies please .. It starts feeling like more of a criminal intent than an exercise in ( really bad) entertaining ! And even for a movie with this lame title : and that my friends is saying something! Ugh!

This was bad on a Jurassic scale. Given it is a movie from The Asylum, then at least we as the audience have an ounce of hope that this might just be one of those movies that stand out from the rest of the movies that they spew out. But no. I must say that given the cover/poster for the movie, I had my hopes up just a little bit, but when I saw THE ASYLUM on the screen as the movie started, all hopes evaporated like dew before the rising sun.The idea was pretty much everything that was used in the "Jurassic Park" movies; dinosaurs have been brought back to life by the hands of humans with the help of technology and research. And of course, these dinosaurs break free of their captivity and wreck havoc on a major city - in this case Los Angeles.Right, almost textbook page by page copy from "Jurassic Park", well, and then exposed to The Asylum. What could possibly go wrong?I will say that the dinosaurs as CGI animated creatures were actually quite alright. However, when they brought in the prosthetics and puppets it just went from alright to oh-so-wrong. These non-CGI animated dinosaurs were such an eyesore that it was downright embarrassing to watch. Especially the scene with the pteranodon in the helicopter. Look at the beak when it is CGI animated and then look at the difference in texture and color even when it is a real prosthetic used. It was just so bad.Story-wise, then "Age of Dinosaurs" was nowhere near as interesting as "Jurassic Park", and chances are that if you have seen any of the "Jurassic Park" movies and enjoyed them, then you don't really want to spend 88 minutes on this movie. The story was as plain, predictable and textbook material as they come.And what about the title itself, "Age of Dinosaurs"? Wouldn't that actually indicate a period of time spanding more than a single day? Well, I guess the title was just about as good as the actual movie was.Regarding the acting in the movie, well, nothing overly interesting here. You have TV pseudo-legend Treat Williams, but he is barely making it watchable. And then there was Ronny Cox, which was actually nice to see, though this is not one of his best movies, not by a long shot.