Dinosaurs Alive!

Narrated by Michael Douglas, Dinosaurs Alive! juxtaposes footage of present-day scholarly expeditions searching for dinosaur fossils (coupled with archival material from early 20th-century digs) and computer-generated sequences illustrating how these ancient creatures might have appeared and behaved. The live-action footage is nicely shot in impressive settings—Mongolia's Gobi Desert and New Mexico—while the animated dinosaurs are decently rendered in Jurassic Park style. But the amount of actual information provided during the 40-minute running time is rather scanty, and the visuals, which were made to be projected on a huge IMAX screen, will have much less impact on even a large home theater system. DVD extras include an instructive “making of” featurette (particularly about the difficulties of shooting in such remote areas with a heavy, unwieldy IMAX camera), a featurette describing the various dinosaur species profiled, and a trivia quiz. Considering the wide availability of more detailed documentaries on the subject—such as Walking with Dinosaurs (VL-5/00)—this is an optional purchase. Aud: I, J, H, P. (F. Swietek)