Product: Future Is Wild [VHS]
Rating: 3.0
Spirited but shoddy and difficult to watch, For Aficionados Only
As a tremendous fan of Dougal Dixon's "After Man", I was shocked to find out recently that "The Future Is Wild" had slipped under my radar. I now have both the TV series and the book derived from it. Surprisingly enough, I would recommend buying the book and skipping this DVD set.Why? It would be easy to get down on the CG animation, which is mostly neither more nor less than mediocre. However, it really isn't too broken, and there are a few genuinely impressive shots scattered about. The main problem with this series comes from outside the CG department: When the program shows you the *same* 10 seconds of animation ten or more times (I am not making this up) in ten or twenty minutes, it becomes very difficult to keep a straight face. Sometimes the footage is tinted or *reversed right-to-left* in a feeble attempt at disguise, but most of the time it is simply one of three or four shots per species, played over and over and over again under different circumstances. The narration is also almost entirely narrative in nature - seldom explanatory - and riddled with awkward pauses, forced drama, and endless repetition.Even given the limited amount of animation available, the show didn't have to be this way; much more sparing use could have been made of the animation by expanding the scientists' filmed explanations, as well as the excellent real-world footage which is used to explain the climatic changes and modern-day basis for their speculations. As it is, the series winds up as a shapeless, shallow circus leaning far too heavily on a sideshow.