"Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure" is only worth seeing for the biggest fans of dinosaur films. It is a 40-minute documentary from almost 10 years ago narrate by Liev Schreiber. The director is experienced documentary filmmaker Sean MacLeod Phillips and the writer is 2-time Emmy nominee Mose Richards. The script, however, is maybe the weakest aspect. It's like mediocre daytime drama taking place in the ancient ages with the constant kill or be killed. No real informative aspects on the creatures depicted in here. The animation is probably the best aspect from this film, but even this one is not particularly great. And the staged sections with the archaeologists in the 1970s are just pretty cringeworthy to watch to be honest. I can see little values here from a scientific perspective, which is really sad as this topic certainly had a lot more to deliver than what we saw here. Not recommended.

Sea Monsters features a story of a family of Dolichorhynchops ("long-nosed face") - a type of plesiosaurs - living out their lives in the inland sea of what is now North America. The film begins with the Dollie mother giving birth and nurturing her two young in the safer near-coastal shallows, but eventually the trio takes to deeper waters to follow the migrating fish. Wonders and dangers await.Narrative: very decent. The concept of following one family works well, and ultimately serves to provide food for thought and empathy. What doesn't work well is that the doc flips back to 20th century paleontologists (played by actors, mostly) studying the protagonists' fossil bones every few minutes. This is done so frequently that it's distracting.Graphics: I'm gonna say "good". The animation of the marine beasts is a little too glossy and artificial-looking, - going for drama rather than realism, - but the lighting is dynamic and captivating, the movements fluid and exciting, and the overall artwork - lush and detailed. So the somewhat unrealistic-looking animals didn't bother me much.The music is cheap... discount-Disney-style... and usually doesn't fit well.Overall: the Sea Monsters and Walking with Monsters episodes of BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs series appealed to me more... but if you enjoy this subject, the present doc is 40 minutes fairly well-spent. 6/10.

Watching "Sea Monsters" at the Omnimax was a real letdown. The film was woefully dull, its creators believing that a reel's worth of CG-animated water creatures is enough to carry a film. The few acting segments were stilted, and there was virtually no storyline to hold my interest. There was a lot of potential in the subject matter, but it would've been better at half the running time, or as a small chunk of a larger topic. The only real highlight of the film was an interesting song by Peter Gabriel that ran over the end credits. The animation itself was artificial, and it seemed that we saw the same sequences played out repeatedly.

This short documentary was a bit of a mixed bag. First the 3-D and CG: the director obviously was more at ease with the the extensive CG then the live action elements, because the 3-D work was jarring and uneven during then. Part of the problem occurs when the live-action segments are shot too closely to the target. There is a sequence in a car and it took me ten seconds at least to get adjusted to the 3-D. These are not problems that occurred in vista shots.The CG work was fantastic and the 3-D involving it was equally as impressive. I saw Meet the Robinsons in 3-D this spring and am eagerly awaiting whatever other 3-D offers there are in store like Beowolf and Avatar.I hate to keep ragging on the live-action elements, but the acting was wretched too. Apparently it is difficult finding somebody who will have all of 30 seconds of screen time and maybe 20 words of dialogue to not sound like they're reading off of a teleprompter. It is nice to see and having a 5-year it is nice to be able to show and explain to him how we can and do know these things about creatures that died out millions of years ago, but with such wooden acting it makes me just sit and wait until the CG behemoths come tearing across the screen again.