(Watch along with me here
.)
The ominous war music from last clip fades away, and there’s some rumbling sound like the actor hit the mike. We fade into a ridiculously upbeat song, especially jarring compared to last clip's music, and two dinos walking.
The one in the background is Tio, our hero, but in the foreground there’s a new character. Like Tio, the new blue dinosaur walks on two legs. It has a face like a monkey and a little black nose. It looks like Gleek from Superfriends, but with a dinosaur body. Because the dinosaurs in this movie didn't look terrible enough.
Next we cut to some… brown T. rex or something. It’s standing in front of a chalkboard (sigh), and says, in a voice usually reserved for goat impressions, “Oh-oh two pupils who don’t liiiike one another WELLLL at least there’s no danger that they’ll be chit-chatting instead of listening to me ah kay come along kids.”
Who… was that directed toward? At first I thought he was just talking to himself, but then he addresses the dinosaurs— was he talking to them? Did he just tell them they didn’t like each other? Awkward. And how would he know, anyway— they don’t look like they don’t like each other. They’re just walking.
This is going to suck.
Cut to Tio walking, then OH SWEET GOD OH, jeez, they need to stop doing close-ups like that. It's a full face shot of Oro, whose head looks like a misshapen potato. There are lines coming out from under his eyes that are meant to be crow’s feet, but just look horrifying. And his eyes, jeez. Not quite as bad as Harlequin-dino from part one, but still. They're pointing in different directions, and they look like snake eyes. Snake eyes in a misshapen potato. As if potato eyes weren’t creepy enough.
Oro has the odd verbal tick of moving his mouth before he actually talks. There’s a lot of that going around in this world; must be something in the water. He asks Tio about his concussion (you remember, the LIGHT concussion he got from falling off a cliff onto his stomach). Actually, he says, "How was your concussion?", like it was a vacation.
“It wasn’t that bad at all,” says Tio, as if he were talking about a trip to the dentist. “I don’t feel a thing now.” Could it be full-body paralysis? We can only hope.
“Ooh goooood,” says Oro, continuing his impression of a goat-man. Goat-dino, I guess. “Where did we end yesterday, Faa?”
“With geography,” says Faa the monkey. Aw, I was hoping I might like this character, but she already annoys me. And she looks like a frigging MONKEY.
For some reason, the classroom is positioned right on the edge of a cliff. You’d think, considering his recent accident, Tio wouldn’t want to be near them. At least, you’d think Oro would find it a bit dangerous to have his five-year-old students wandering around a cliff. But I guess he’s not much into child safety. Come to think, how did the kids get up there, anyway?
Speaking of anyway, there’s a movie going on. Oro, clearly senile and a danger to have around children, remembers he was talking about the mountains, one of which is a volcano. “What is so special ABOUT volCAnos, Tio?”
Tio bullshits his way through the question like a kid doing a book report. “Uhh,” he says, as we zoom in on a shot of an oddly-shaped mound of rock we’re supposed to assume is a volcano, “they’re rather high and it’s very strenuous to get to the top.” I think this dialogue is rather too sophisticated for a five-year-old; even smart kids would find using some of these words in casual speech strenuous.
Faa, suddenly face-to-face with Tio, says, “Wow you are stupid.” Aaaaand I like her again! Even if she does look like a monkey. “They’re special because they can spit fire and ashes and hot lava flows down the mountains from the side.” While she prattles, Tio gives her his best Kubrick Stare, and Oro continues to stare off into the distance. Of course, he stares into the distance in two different directions.
Snake eyes.
“Rubbish!” says Tio. (Four.)
“No it’s not,” says Faa.
“Have you ever seen it?” asks Tio.
“Uh, no, uh, but.”
“So there. You’re just showing off,” says the woman VA, suddenly giving up her Tio voice.
“Nooooo Faa is riiiight volcanoes don’t always spit fire, just sometimes. The last time is very long agooooo. It makes me a little restless, you know, we may be due for a larger eruption soon.”
Wow, that wasn't ominous at all. I don't feel like this will be a plot point in the near future. Also, larger? Don’t you need a “large” before you can have a “larger”? And I know he talked about the last one, but if it was such a long time ago, then wouldn't it be too long... how… wha…. Ugh. I’m just stopping before I get too frustrated.
“Can’t one tell beforehand?” wonders Tio. I don’t know, Tio— can one?
Faa replies, “Yes my uncle Ugh said, there are SIGNS but at the moment, there’s aren’t any.” There’s aren’t any? Uncle Ugh, you’re in good company— I’m going “Ugh,” too.
Oro’s odd mouth flapping tick takes over again. While Faa is still talking, his mouth flaps, but when she ends he says, “Signs that we have so far been watching are raaather unreliable. But I want to show you something IIIIII have invented a machine that will warn us weeks ahead when a volcano is about to erupt yeah.” Yeah! That's the male VA’s own verbal tick. It matches with Oro's off flapping.
Cut to Peak the Rhyming Freak, who sing-songs, “OOHH Oro invents great things, but others just call it slings.” Uh… wha… nuh.
The DRAMATIC MIDI BONGOS cut in. Oh dear, something dramatic is about to happen! And I’m proven right— Tio, Faa, and Oro are walking.
Fascinating.
We cut to a phonograph, which has been tipped on its side. I know we make jokes about our grandparents being dinosaurs, but this is ridiculous.
Peak walks on scene, because we couldn’t do anything in this movie without Peak. Horrifying spike-nosed nightmare monster… Oro says he’s in the way, prompting him to frown and say, “All I want to do is hear and not try to disturb my dear.” Oh, God, Lady Gaga writes better lyrics than this.
“Now, pay attention,” says Oro, standing next to the machine. We get a better look at it, and it’s apparently operated by the small green seahorse from part 1, who… hops on it. I guess that’s how it gets its energy? I dunno, it’s never explained.
Oro continues, “With this funnel the machine can sense EARTH movements looOong before we can.” Dude, it’s not a seismograph, it’s clearly a phonograph. Stop fooling the kids and take your medicine, you dinosaur.
He explains that when the earth moves, the machine paints little curves, but of course THAT only happens when something happens within the earth! Surely nothing like that could happen right this second OH SNAP!
The little hopping seahorse falls off the phonograph and the phonographs starts shaking. This is meant to imply the ground is shaking, but it looks faker than shaking the camera on a Star Trek set.
Tio is impressed that the machine works (idiot), and Oro (cocky) replies, “Well OF COURSE it works you silly boy. But that means that the volcanoes are gunna erupt in the near future.” This news shocks Peak, whose head starts inflating and deflating again. He should get that looked at. “And that’s, what’s gunna happen! YES!” I’m starting to hate that verbal tick.
“With fire and everything?” says Tio. “GREAT!”
“Don’t you have any sense at ALL in your thick deano skull?" Finally, someone says what we're all thinking! "If the volcano erupts it will be a ca-tas-tro-phe! Go and fetch your parents! We have to discuss what has to be done!”
Cue DRAMATIC MIDI BONGOS as Faa and Tio run for their parents.
