March of the Dinosaurs (2011)

Aired around the same time as the feature-length documentary Death of the Megabeasts, March of the Dinosaurs looked at a more traditional area of pre-historic life. Coming off a bit like a feature-length Walking with Dinosaurs, this CGI film followed a couple of dinosaurs, Scar (an Edmontosaurus) and Patch (a Troodon) during one autumn-winter transition in the Arctic 70 million years ago. Narrated by Stephen Fry, the rather bleak narrative, that sees a lot of dino-death, follows a rather unoriginal story, as seen in The Land Before Time or Disney's Dinosaur, namely that of a migration. 

Scar and his herd of Edmontosauruses, plus a group of Pachyrhinosauruses (I'm not convinced I have the right plurals here), make the journey from their summer stomping ground to find food in a better location hundreds of miles further south. Patch and his fellow Troodons stay in the same and perpetual night-time and compete with Gorgosauruses for scarce food. None of these dinosaurs are familiar to me or would be to an audience brought up on Jurassic Park and the aforementioned dino movies so the novelty of learning about new species is interesting, especially as a couple of the species sport feathers in line with more modern theories of bird evolution. 

While Fry's narration naturally gives the dinosaurs an anthropomorphic bent in order to engage with the non-speaking CGI reptiles, it doesn't get sentimental. March of the Dinosaurs is an intriguing prospect and appears to be trying to educate as it entertains, and having Fry narrate is an obvious way to unite the themes and lend the film gravitas. There is just something about it all that doesn't make the whole as engaging as it might. Over a 30 minute episode of Walking with Dinosaurs, with Kenneth Branagh's excitable narration learning about dinosaurs was exciting, stretched out to 2 hours (with adverts) with less effective CGI it is difficult to sustain the same interest in the story being told.