The Worst Movie That Ever Was And Ever Will Be

I got a bad review of my book the other day.  On New Year's Eve, actually.  It was a really hurtful, bitter review, left by someone who was overly angry at a book that she probably paid nothing for.  I was upset about it for a while, then I decided not to waste my time dwelling on such a miserable person's opinion.  I didn't want to become someone who focuses only on the negative.  If I were to do that, then I would be like her.  I decided to start 2014 with only positive thoughts!

And then I went to see Walking With Dinosaurs.

Fuck.  And I mean fuuuuuck.  If Fifty Shades of Grey is the worst book that ever was and ever will be, then Walking With Dinosaurs is the worst movie that ever was and ever will be.  At least until the Fifty Shades of Grey movie comes out.  But even that is debatable. If I had to choose between sitting through Walking With Dinosaurs for a second time, and watching Anastasia Steele get repeatedly railed by that sick twisted s.o.b., I might have to go for the latter.

And now let's begin:

Walking With Dinosaurs was produced by BBC Earth after the success of their 1999 miniseries of the same name.  It was originally made as a silent film.  A silent film that would have been AWESOME and gorgeous and totally enjoyable to watch. But then some Hollywood executives came along and said "Hey, what would be better than this really awesome silent dinosaur film that would be unlike any other dinosaur film ever made?  I know! Let's dub it with the voice of that guy from Alvin and the Chipmunks.  Justin Long.  Yeah, that guy.  We want him!  And don't forget John Leguizamo!"

My.  God.

I read the bad reviews before we went into the theater, but I still didn't quite comprehend.  I thought, how bad can it be? My four year old will like it, and I just want to look at the dinosaurs.  Who cares about the script?  You know who definitely didn't care about the script?  Whoever wrote the fucking script.

The movie starts off in present day with this paleontologist guy driving his niece and nephew up into the mountains of Alaska to look for dinosaur bones.  The teenaged nephew is all into his cell phone and doesn't care about paleontology in the slightest.  He's all "Who cares about science?  Science didn't build my iPhone!  CANDY CRUSH SAGA!!!!!!!"  The uncle parks the car and takes off with the niece and leaves the dopey nephew to wait in the car.  About three seconds later this wisecracking Latino bird flies down and starts speaking to the kid.  Maybe the kid was doing mushrooms in the car while he waited, I don't know.  They didn't show that part.  Anyway, this talking bird, voiced by John Leguizamo, shows up, and tells the kid that the ancient past is really way super cool and that he's going to tell him all about it.  Then he morphs into this dinosaur bird, unfortunately still voiced by John Leguizamo, and away we go!

The worst bird in all of history

I think I'm just going to make a list:

1)  The voices.  My God, the voices.  First of all, since the movie was originally meant to be a silent film, the dinosaurs mouths don't move.  There's just this weird voiceover throughout the entire thing, where it looks like the dinosaurs are communicating telepathically.  It made it very difficult to figure out who the hell was talking.  Unless, of course it was John Leguizamo, then all you said to yourself was "Shit, that annoying bird's talking again."

2) The main character is this teenaged dinosaur (was that a thing?) named Patchi, who goes on a migration with his herd.  Along the way he falls in love with this other teenaged dinosaur and the two of them get separated from the herd and run into all sorts of dopey trouble.  Whatever.  Who cares.  All I could focus on was the absolute garbage that kept spewing out of Patchi's mouth.  Endless references to modern day things, like calling bird-like dinosaurs "Turkey bird!" as an insult.  Turkeys?  Why would dinosaurs know about turkeys??  And ninjas!  And he talked as if he were typing status updates on Facebook.  "Worst.  Migration.  Ever."  He says this.  HE ACTUALLY FUCKING SAYS THIS.

I'm happy you guys are extinct

3) I'm always up for a poop or a fart joke.  I'll even take a vomit joke if it's all you've got.  This movie dumped all of the above on us within the first ten minutes, and did so with such awful delivery that all I could do was roll my eyes.  You know who used to roll her eyes at poop jokes?  My mother.  This movie has turned me into my mother.

4)  The main character has this permanent hole in his head from where he was attacked when he was a baby.  Countless times we were subjected to jokes about his hole.  This movie that only appeals to children under age 3, makes countless references to a dinosaur's HOLE.  Like his butthole, get it?!?  The producers really wanted you to get it - that's why they made the joke fifty-seven times.

5) Patchi's brother, Scowler, is a total douche-bag.  He talks like Biff from Back to the Future.  He says things like "Hey losers!  Ha Ha! They looked!"  That's all I have to say about him.  I wish he'd died.

Scowler

6)  At one point, when all the dinosaurs were walking across a frozen lake, I wished that they would fall in and drown so that I could go home.

7)  At the end of the movie we get to see the dopey human kid again.  Apparently he's watched the same movie that we just did even though he was standing out in the Alaskan wilderness.  He's suddenly all "PALEONTOLOGY ROCKS!!!"  and even his uncle is like "Woah, it's not that cool."  Then the bird, who literally made me feel like I was being stabbed in the brain with a fork, came back to end the movie with one more lame joke.  Then he burst out of the movie screen and followed me to the car saying things like "I know you are, but what am I?" into the back of my head.

In conclusion:  Don't see this movie.  Don't take your kids to see this movie.  Don't remind me that I've seen this movie.  The script was so bad that I wasn't even able to concentrate on how awesome the special effects probably were, and that's a pretty big shame.