Dinosaur Island (2014)
This is the movie where the Tyrannosaurus looks like a Giant Parrot!
Directed by Matt Drummond
Staring:
Darius Williams
Kate Rasmussen
Joe Bistaveous
This is an Australian release involving a boy who’s plane goes through an electric storm that opens up a portal to a world of lost things. There’s planes, boats, and vehicles of all sizes, killer plants and giant centipedes, and of course, dinosaurs. Once there, he meets a young lady (age 15) from the 1950s and together they survive and even find a way out. To give the film some credit, the dinos are brightly colored and creatively rendered. They use all the latest information from dinosaur discoveries and theories to portray a more modern picture of dinosaur life. The coloration seems to take cues from the Amazon jungles where there are many bright colored animal species.
The film tries to pull a page from the book of Disney and be fun for kids of all ages, but fails to pull it off. The film’s actors are stiff and unsympathetic. I don’t wholly blame the kids here because the script often dumps blocks of information through the 
dialogue like text book chapters, just to clarify the story’s progress. The jokes fall flat and the plot is fairly monotone never building to a climax.
I do like the dromaeosaurus and the new-fangled iguanodon. Also the pterosaurs look good and fly gracefully. The raptors look good despite having feathers. The biggest drawback is the T. Rex. Latest fossils have shown skin textures in some of the later Cretaceous Rexes to have chicken-skin bumps mostly associated with feathers. However, they are only in certain areas of the body and thought to be present only on juveniles. In this film we have a full grown T. Rex, fully feathered and brightly colored, looking like some deranged nightmare parrot. I was neither impressed nor menaced by this gaudy creature.
Initially I had been excited about this film and impressed with some of the dinos in the trailer. The CG was very well done and incorporated into the live footage seamlessly. However, the film seems to be pandering to an American audience, mimicking a summer blockbuster and is all the more dull because of it. I would say it is better than most of the shot-on-digital-video, SyFy-style dino flicks. The CG in this is much better than in those flicks. I’m a huge fan of dinosaur movies and try to see them all. Except for a few dino action scenes, DI 2014 is lackluster. I enjoy most dinosaur movies (even the bad ones), but I just can’t recommend this one to anyone but the completist dinosaur movie fan. I think I would have enjoyed it more as a half hour documentary depicting the feathered dinosaur for debate.
Some cool dinosaur coloration and ideas but overall a lackluster dino film.
I can only give it a 2.0 out of 5 on the feathered dino freak scale.
parlor of horror 
Randomly, I think I have met the dude who directed this… or at least I met someone at a film fest out here developing something similar a few years ago. Seemed like a nice enough dude I guess. Unfortunately that ‘pandering to american audiences’ thing you mentioned is kind of common amongst Aussie family fare. Guess it makes it an easier sell to production companies/distributors etc.
I actually think it’s a mistake for foreign films to want to seem American. British films have a distinct feel, Spanish films have a distinct feel and Asian films have a distinct feel, even when they are targeted at US audiences. I would have preferred something that seemed Aussie in style or feel.
I don’t know if you have seen it, but you should give Primeval a shot. Excellent show packed with dinosaurs.
This one doesn’t look too bad.
I’ve heard of it but I don’t know where to watch it. I should track it down, I think I would like it 🙂