Showing @ Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh until Thu 10 May

David Krentz, Erik Nelson / USA / 2012 / 83 min

Until shattering new discoveries are made, there is little to be told of the dinosaurs on screen, largely due to the vast array of TV programmes already available. Here, Werner Herzog narrates David Krentz and Erik Nelson’s fully CGI’d quasi-documentary, patched together from original episodes, which forces through a narrative attempting to tell a grand, moral tale of survival and consequence.

The animation could almost be a carbon copy of BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs; some fairly impressive graphics avoid totally resembling a computer game but don’t go much further. The battles between rival groups and species are pitched fiercely enough but lack the direct and more obvious focus offered in juicier versions like Jurassic Fight Club. The film is trapped between using Herzog’s Attenborough-esque cadence to attach some majestic meaning to the inevitability (and cyclicity) of life and death, and showing us the cruel predatory environment of the dinosaurs. It manages to hold your attention but sparks no new discourse on the prehistoric era, flitting too erratically between the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. For information, just stick to National Geographic series, and for entertainment, see here.