65 Parent Guide

Mills (Adam Driver) agreed to pilot a two year long space voyage for one reason - his daughter. Although the trip will separate them, he needs the money to pay for her medical care. But this trip is going to take longer than either of them expect…

When the ship is damaged as it passes through an uncharted asteroid belt, Mills lands on the nearest available planet, which happens to be Earth. But the Earth Mills crashes on is not one populated by humans. He’s arrived approximately 65 million years too early for us and the denizens of Earth in this era include huge bugs, strange plants…and the massive, terrible lizards we call dinosaurs.

Mills manages to find another survivor from his ship, a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), but she speaks a different language and his translator was destroyed in the crash. They need to find a way to get to the ship’s rescue pod, which separated and impacted a mountain a few miles away. Those few miles are full of the local wildlife, so crossing the terrain is going to be more than a little dangerous. And they need to move fast: the asteroid which trashed Mills’ ship is heading straight for Earth and is more than large enough to eliminate all life on the planet. No rush, though.

You can really tell this movie was made by Americans. Who else would create a high-tech alien civilization capable of interstellar flight and still make them pay out of pocket for healthcare? Unfortunately, that little sociopolitical quirk isn’t the move’s only issue. Adam Driver is a capable actor, and he is just about the only reason to watch the film, but approximately 80% of his dialogue just consists of heavy mouth breathing to the point that it becomes distracting. Unfortunately, when he’s not on screen we’re either stuck with Koa, who doesn’t speak English (or barely anything else, for that matter), or some really, really, really weird dinosaurs. Somehow, 1993’s Jurassic Park remains the gold standard of dinosaur films, and this film, despite a generation’s worthof computer innovation, can’t even compete. Not least because the dinos still don’t have feathers, despite 30 years of scientific research in between these films indicating that they did. And if you think that feathered dinosaurs couldn’t be scary, I’d advise you to go look at a therizinosaur. Or a cassowary.

The editing in this movie is a real dog’s breakfast, almost literally. I think they edited portions of this film by feeding reels to a dog, and letting its digestive system do the work. (I don’t envy whoever had to recover the film, though.) Scenes either come to an abrupt and jarring end or drag out for a small eternity. This was one of those movies where I was checking my watch almost exactly every eight minutes, which is not an ideal audience experience.

Parents unconcerned by poor editing and dodgy writing might have some issues with the bloody violence in the film, which you should expect when you mix dinosaurs with humans, since we’re basically lunchboxes with legs as far as they’re concerned. There’s also a smattering of scatological profanity, but that’s about all you need to worry about – at least as far as content goes. The premise is interesting, but the execution is an extinction-level mess. In all honesty, I think I would have preferred being hit with a colossal asteroid to watching the film. The asteroid would at least be over sooner. And without quite as much heavy breathing, I hope.