Sea Monsters 3D: A Prehistoric Adventure

Director Sean McLeod Phillips and a huge crew of CGI experts give us an IMAX 3-D documentary of marine life during the age of dinosaurs, following the imagined life of a dolichorhynchops, a dolphin-sized reptile inhabiting the sea that once covered central North America, tracing the whimsically nicknamed “Dolly” from birth to her peaceful death of old age and—through creative time-lapse animation—fossilization and discovery in a Kansas riverbank 65 million years later. The animation is generally excellent—a little cartoonish in spots, but what it may lack in visual texture is made up for by the nifty 3-D effects. The film hops blithely from prehistoric days to more recent times—1915, 1938, 1978, present day—and back without losing our interest, with dignified narration by Liev Schreiber.