Ancient Adventure.
Dinosaurs are everyone's favorite fossils. All kids seem to know about them in one way or another. There's "Jurassic Park" and other movies. There's Barney. All major natural history museums have exhibits. Dinosaurs are many states' "official fossil" and on and on. Well, why not? Even though they constitute only a small portion of the total Mesozoic fauna, they're generally large and spectacular and grab the imagination like no other fossil group. The Mesozoic Era was a glorious time for the reptiles and not just the Dinosaurs. The Mesozoic oceans had an assemblage of large marine reptiles that were just as remarkable in their habitats as the Dinosaurs were on land. Giant marine turtles, Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs of great variety and ferocious Mosasaurs, in addition to some pretty gigantic sharks and other fish, roamed the Mesozoic seaways. "Sea Monsters: A prehistoric Adventure" is a film put together to depict the marine fauna of this time span.
"Sea Monsters" weaves...
Better for Education than Entertainment
The special effects were amazing, a lot of information was given, wonderful narration, and the storyline was interesting.
However, I can't bring myself to give more than three stars because the staged paleontologist scenes were too cheesy for me...I don't know if better actors would have made a difference. Just when we were getting into the scenes with the prehistoric creatures, it would cut away to a reacreation of how the fossils were found - it was very distracting.
I think maybe they should have separated those scenes from the main storyline, and offered the fossil information as a special feature for the DVD.
If you prefer the set-up of DVDs such as Chased By Sea Monsters or When Dinosaurs Roamed America, you might have the same problem trying to sit through this DVD.
We bought this DVd for our...
not what I expected
I was dissappointed with this documentary. It opens showing a landscape and then 3 people in an SUV identified as paleontologists who don't appear again in the film until the very end. They don't do anything but talk among themselves about what they are looking for which doesn't add anything to the documentary. It is never clearly stated who they are and who they represent. The film also shows other paleontologists who do a little more talking, but still who they represent remains a mystery. A great deal of time is spent on dazzleling the viewer with the special effects and a story about the adventures of two sea dynosaurs (doli...?). The narration left much to be desired and the music was poorly chosen. This film was designed it seems mostly for kids. You learn very little from this.
I consider National Geographic to be one of the best makers of nature documentaries, but this one is the worst documentary or supposed documentary I've ever seen from them...
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