[.ca] When Dinosaurs Roamed America (Widescreen)

From Amazon.com:
For dino lovers of all stripes, this Discovery Channel special delivers an entertaining documentary about what it was like to live in the land of giants. Combining nature photography and computer graphics, the program brings the dinosaurs--all of which lived on the North American continent of yore--to life. The 90-minute showcase explores dinosaurs with a narrative-story style similar to that used in BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs. The program includes quick, informative bits by paleontologists in the field, and shows nifty 3-D cross-sections of a dinosaur muscle and skeleton structures. Although it's quite fun to see what prehistoric America may have looked like (a typical opening slide: "Philadelphia, 300 million years ago"), the film doesn't have the technical expertise or fluidity of its BBC successor. Due to some dinosaur chomping, this program is not suited for children younger than 8. --Doug Thomas

The science!:
Although you may have been seeing some poor reveiws of this movie, I personally think it is a wonderful video- of course I agree about the poor graphic standards. The creators could have made the dinosaurs look more realistic. However, having seen both "Walking with Dinosaurs" and "When Dinosaurs Roamed America", I must say I can't see any copy-catting in the two movies. So what if WWD was more sucessful. The reason that most people think WDRA is copy-catting WWD is because they both use about the same dinosaurs. (I do like WDRA's version of T-Rex more than WWD's version). Also, WDRA could have put more variety of dinosaurs in their movie to make it more different from WWD. They could have put dinos like Charcharodontosaurus or Spinosaurus to make if more less copy-cat-like. But overall, any 4-5 star rating dinosaur documentary is a good way to try to explain dinosaur behavior. *cheers for documentaries*

Not Better Than WWD:
When Dinosaurs Roamed America is a movie similar to "Walking with Dinosaurs", it shows dinosaurs made with computer animation in a documentary style (like nature shows). Since both movies are similar, a fair comparison can be made. The computer animation is excellent just as in WWD. The music is average classical stlye, but not as good as WWD. The narrator in this movie is, Mr. John Goodman, who did a pretty good job, but does not match the excellent narration of the one in WWD. A few other things kind falters in this movie, "When Dinosaurs Roamed America": it's very short, it has similar scenes to WWD, they even took similar narration lines. Overall it's a very good movie but lacks the poetic beauty of Walking with Dinosaurs DVD, but it's still a good purchase.

My 4 1/2 year old loves this video!:
I got this video for my son when he was 3 and started really getting into dinosaurs. He's probably watched it 50 times and is still engrossed every time. I like that it not only shows the computer animated dinosaurs with narratives, but features many of today's experts on this topic sharing their thoughts. It's also helped both of us learn the pronunciations of the longer dinosaur names. Though not perfect, I'd much rather my kids watch reality-based programming like this than that ridiculous Land Before Time series. (Believe me, you can tell which kids watch the fluff and which ones watch documentaries.)

Entertaining but not especially noteable:
It is difficult to grade this 90 minute film without mentioning Walking With Dinosaurs which was fantastic (5 star effort) and runs along a comparable story line. When Dinosaurs Roamed America was clearly done with a tight budget in mind -- the graphics are clearly (or rather unclearly) computer generated, often awkward and not persuasively "real". The raptors however are done well and the overall story lines seem reasonably thought out and logical for the viewer. I dislike the moderator John Goodman who brings a Roseann-type blue collar "image" to the viewer. Almost anyone else would have been much better. Overall, I think the product was not intended to be bought for a collector's shelf. It is akin quality wise to a made-for-tv movie, intended to be watched once, and only once. A bland, average product far inferior to the "Walking With" series.

Cheap knock-off of Walking with Dinosaurs:
A hastily put together c-grade Walking with Dinosaurs knock-off by the Discovery Channel, obviously cannot compete in any area with the BBC's production. If you're really into dinosaurs you might want to check it out, but even then you'll be hard pressed to stay interested in this sub-par effort.