A young T-Rex is living the life in the valley with his father, the king of the valley. Soon, they find themselves in trouble and his father dies, so he goes on an adventure, meets some friends, and comes back to save the valley from bad guys.
Sound familiar? Well, it should. The first third and last third of the film are heavily “influenced” by The Lion King, down to the son of the king having to run and his brother being the bad guy. Of course, The Lion King borrowed from and was influenced by Kimba The White Lion aka Jungle Emperor. If these story similarities don’t bother you and you can just not worry about the borrowed content, the film’s story does have a few ideas of its own in the middle section and using dinosaurs for it all is definitely fun and something most kids would likely be into at one point in their lives. As it is, directors Cai Shangming and Chen Silin have put together a decently entertaining kids film that is watchable, but not exactly going for anything original. The film is decent, it’s just not all that original.
In terms of the animation, it’s passable, the quality is decent, but nothing to write home about, it is seemingly computer animation, so some of it is fantastic and some of it, not so much. For example, the water and its movement are good, but some of the dinosaurs seem to be lacking details to a severe degree. Some kids won’t notice that, but any adult watching along will most likely get annoyed at the uneven quality of the designs and animation. The lead dinosaurs look good, they are cute. The bad guys look a little evil, a little scary, but not too badly that kids would not be able to finish the film. Then, there are characters that don’t get as much screen time, and it seems they were given an equivalent level of attention to their time spent on screen. Some of them downright look terrible. Which leads to a film that looks uneven as it goes through the motions of showing us new characters along with the lead.
The new release that comes out June 20th, 2023, has a brand-new English dub which is the version that was watched for review. The dub is decent. It’s not the greatest, but it’s definitely decent. The only issue really is with some of the names chosen. For example, the bad guy’s name is Fang, but our hero’s name is Jarod. Jarod. Could not give him a name that goes with Fang or a fantasy name or a name that fits a T-Rex better? Jarod is a fine name, it just doesn’t come off as a heroic T-Rex. The voice acting does decently well with the script at hand, some of the lines are clunky, but it seems to be fairly normal for kids films.
Overall, the film is ok. It’s not great, it’s not bad. It’s just in the middle. There are some fun scenes, some scenes clearly lifted from other movies, and some randomness here. The film will definitely appeal to kids with dinosaur obsession, but probably not to their parents.