This is a movie for KIDS. I have a two-year old, and he LOVES this film; he chooses it for about 25% of his total viewing options. He has learned a lot about different types of dinosaurs across books and videos, and we talk about different dinosaurs and flying reptiles through the movie as we watch it. Have wikipedia handy, because there isn't anything scientific in the fare.We skip the scary part in the cave (he doesn't like the mean dino-cronies unless they're getting bested by the protagonists).I don't know a thing about the Dinotopia books, or mini-series, or anything. It's clear there are references to other things all throughout the movie, but it's not disruptive to young children. Based on other reviews, I'm sure it butchers that material into nice clean young-child-friendly pork chops.Clearly appears to be a reach for the toy market, due to the strutters (they look great, would love to know if they were ever prototyped). Lots of potential for multiple releases and sat-morn fare, but never expanded; too bad. Overall: Good animation, very fluid, good expressions, not jumpy like modern kid cartoons designed for the ADHD crowd. Classic styling with computer-generated backgrounds that are nicely handled.Voice acting pretty good, unfortunately the script and story is scatterbrained and simplistic. NOT for a ten year old, and DEFINITELY not for a 35 year old Dinotopia hardcore. It's for younger children to enjoy a romp through a fantasy land where dinosaurs have feelings too.

I'm going to be brutally honest about this movie. It's mislabeled. I'll explain that in a moment. Suffice it to say that if you are older than 10 this movie will either cause you an emotion of rage or bore you to tears.Generally when you make a children's movie out of a popular series the intent is usually to bring young people into a fantasy world in a safe environment. Apparently they missed that idea because it doesn't bring you into anything. It makes a lot of references to the TV mini series and they traced a few of the backgrounds out of the original book but mostly they ignore all of the important plot devices from the series and replace them with Saturday morning cartoon plot devices. It may as well have been called "Kids in Dinoland", because the ideas surrounding Dinotopia are just not there, which is why it is mislabeled.Moving on to the technical side of the movie, it is not terrible but it is by no means great. The character animation is surprisingly smooth for a goofy straight to video movie. The backgrounds look alright most of the time, and the animation is mostly consistent. It mostly looks like a Saturday morning cartoon though.The story is baked terrible with a side of fried stupid. It's chock full of clichés and stupid jokes from 90's pop culture. There are really vague references and allusions to plot points from the mini series and books but they never go into any of them. Dinotopian culture is not explained at all, which would be alright if it were not about someone being introduced to Dinotopian culture.Now for some nit picking. The characters are mostly forgettable and bland, except for the bad guys and 26. There were even a few attempts at musical numbers that were bizarre. The sun stones and what they supposedly do made even less sense than they did in the mini-series. I seriously thought we had gotten over idiotic skateboarding in the 90's. Oh yeah and the ending leads me to believe they made this as a pilot for another TV series that just didn't happen.To wrap up, as a fan of animation, movies, sci-fi, and other nonsense I refuse to call something that is bad good. People use the fact that this is a children's movie to defend it's problems, but as it is based on a series I give it no quarter because when it's based on a series for everybody it should not exclude the majority of it's fans or people who may be interested. So while I'm not prepared to call it horrible because it is by no means the worst thing I have ever seen, it just isn't good. If you are a fan or passerby who may be interested (like me) this movie is not worth your time. If you need to distract a 5 year old for an hour than this may be for you.

If you have little kids, it might occupy them for a while.But if you've spent any time at all with the books, you're going to just get more and more annoyed with the inaccuracies and mistakes as the movie goes on.-Ogthar, the villain, was an ancient mythical half human, half saurian king of the sunken island of Poseidos in The World Beneath but is used as a human villain here, a cross between Roff Striker from First Flight and Lee Crabb from the original book.-using dinosaurs as Ogthar's cronies was just wrong, some humans, like Crabb, aren't as happy on the island, but it's not likely at all you'd see saurians like that.They've got quadrapeds walking on hindlegs, which you KNOW is wrong -the hatcheries are way off but that's only the Miniseries' fault -the Skybax was pretty accurate but they're annoying having a scene with the hatchery girl's dad riding one, the books state that "None but the rider dares approach it" *ends rant* I just can't help the annoyance being such a big Dintopia fan. I just wish someone would make a film that's keeping with the books and quit changing so much.

Meh.For the record, I loved loved LOVED the original book, and even read and enjoyed the sequel (World Below, IIRC).This was. . . well, it was only 76 minutes. That's the best thing I can say about it.Rough summary (spoilers ahoy!). Protagoniat Kex runs away from an orphanage (?!) in what appears to be present-day Seattle, or possible San Francisco, stows away on a ship's lifeboat, which conveniently falls overboard in a storm. Shipwrecks or boatwrecks on a tropic island shore, and is promptly confronted by a small dinosaur speaking flawless, colloquial American English. It doesn't get better from there.Almost everything that made the original Dinotopia wonderful IMHO was carefully excised to make this 'kid-friendly', and a lot of kludge was carefully wadded in. The brief scenes in Waterfall City were a painful glimpse of the movie this could have been had they given a good g*dd**n. In closing, this could have been the lowest point in Malcom McDowell's career - but there's still GigaShadow.