A stop-motion depiction of prehistoric times, "64,000,000 Years Ago" doesn't say anything that dinosaur fans don't already know and isn't entertaining in any meaningful sense, but it does a decent job of portraying on film what scientists of the '70s thought life was like late in the reign of the dinosaurs. The stop-motion animation, while not as fluid and lifelike as more modern productions, is good enough to be appealing. On the whole, it's just average both as entertainment and as an educational short, best suited for younger dinosaur fans (old enough to handle a little bit of blood and violence, and a mating scene interrupted just before it gets explicit) and animation fanatics.
2 Reviews
How can you make a dinosaur film this dull?
planktonrules1 June 2011
This is an educational film sponsored by the National Film Board of Canada. And, since they often bankrolled esoteric, artsy and educational films (as well as some genuinely fun ones), you can often assume correctly that the cartoon will not be the sort that is necessarily commercial in nature. "64,000,000 Years Ago" is definitely a film that might not have seen the light of day without governmental financial support as it's VERY educational and dry--which is sad, since it IS about dinosaurs--which should be cool and bloody. Instead, it looks like the kind of stuff they showed to kids in school back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid. The stop-motion isn't bad but it also isn't exactly cutting edge, either. And, by today's standards it's rather quaint--representing a style that has gone by the wayside....and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sadly, I kept hoping for something super-exciting in this one, but it didn't ever get that cool (other than a somewhat bloodless impaling)--and the deathly dull narrator and his monotone voice didn't help any. Perhaps worth a look if you adore dinosaurs, otherwise an easy one to skip.
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