Dinosaur Love (2023)

too many sound effects, not enough plot

Overall: thought this was a romcom but episode 3 took quite a turn. I also really disliked the "comedy" sound effects. 8 episodes about 40 minutes each. Aired cut on UltimateTroop Official YouTube channel and uncut on iQIYI (eps 9 and 10 for premium members). Ultimate Troop also produced "Remember Me" and "The Yearbook".

Content Warnings: sexual assault/attempted rape (episode 3 part 2), self harm/attempted suicide (episode 3 part 2), manhandling, mental health struggles, beaten up, violence/punches, bullying, stalking

What I Liked
- Dino's singing and guitar playing sounded realistic
- awesome dance moves
- how the friend pointed out the difficulty of finding someone on a large campus
- happy Rak did something in episode 2 and did stand up for himself
- Mean's cameo in episode 2 with the angelic music was funny
- that they mentioned their series "The Yearbook"
- the idea of filling that jar to give Rak some time to recover (though this idea didn't work out)
- at least there weren't dead fish lip presses*
- Chalam and his eggs/pet snake

Room For Improvement
- that there were no consequences for the absolute despicable thing Mek did in episode 3
- the "comedy" sound effects actually make me NOT laugh, not a fan of toilet humor/conversations
- some scenes dragged on for too long like the scene in episode 3 part 2 and the terrible attempt at a redemption arc with Mek's sister
- strongly disagreed with Mek's sister saying an apology can fix everything, an apology can most definitely NOT fix everything and Mek is now beyond redeemable after episode 3
- Rak went from out of the frying pan and into the fire because Dino did not understand boundaries, "don't take too long to open your heart because I won't wait" and after Rak says for him not to touch him he....touches him...
- it's odd how the show depicted the stalker as bad but Dino did the exact same things (ignored boundaries, aggressive pursuit, extremely possessive)
- *in episode 8 the loud slurping noises not in sync with the movements was bad, plus I like some tongue but it was just too much tongue and licking
- Rak was reluctant even in the last two episodes, wish they had shown him with more agency/initiating physical stuff
- effeminate guy stereotype as hypersexualized
- at times the music was mismatched, there was a more serious scene and it had lighthearted music (hospital scene was a good example of this)
- ep 1 voice over exposition dump
- nonsense things: Rak's friends let him leave the club with some rando, say it's loud at the football field but it's quiet, lights on when sleeping, why did Rak stop running when there was an open doorway there in episode 3, etc.
- last 2 episodes were almost all filler and felt very unnecessary (and a new toxic character "you can't tell me to stop" bleh)

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Why were the best episodes behind another pay wall?

The two final episodes were the best in terms of acting, story and consistent editing and yet you needed VIP Premium to watch them whereas the rest of the series you only needed VIP Standard on IQIYI.

The final episodes had more story than the first 8 put together. The acting was closer to what I’d expect from a series and there was less of the comedy sounds added over - apart from the scene with Ai. The use of music there really confused me and gave me a slight headache.

Pepper’s acting shined in the final story where he got to express a full range of emotions. I hope he gets to act in more shows that will be able to platform his talent.

I understand that the production needs to make money but why would you hide your best content behind an additional paywall and let the mediocre content be what the masses are consuming?

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Todo mal...

Simplemente decepcionante, esperaba más de este drama.
Empezamos mal desde que tomaron la decisión de usar esos efectos de sonido, mala música, mala edición, tomas repetidas, no hay una trama interesante, escenas y diálogos demasiado largos y sin sentido y ni hablar de las "actuaciones" creo que es lo peor del drama, me dolía cada vez que un personaje miraba directamente a la camara, toda la "relación" entre Rak y Dino se sentía incómoda, lo único que salió bien fue las escenas de besos que no duraban más de 1 minuto y que son apenas 3 si mal no recuerdo y están en los últimos episodios!

Los personajes secundarios todos terriblemente actuados.
Y para rematar no debería llamarse drama, más bien es un comercial del jugo que sale cada 2 segundos.

Mejor pasa de largo, no te pierdes de nada, haste un favor y no veas esto!!!

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I can't believe I finished this

Where do I even begin? Let me start with the good, and it's a very short list of 1
Story/plot - Here's the reason I'm angry about this series, they wasted a good story on this rubbish. It was a love at first sight situation that should have been adorable but they somehow managed to bungle even that. Boy meets boy, boy falls in love with boy but finds out boy is in a relationship and respectfully takes a half step back till boy is ready for a new relationship. Sounds good right?

CONS
1. The acting - I've seen bad acting but Brute Force Dino and Doe Eyed Dummy Rak deserve some type of award for how bad this was. Rak spent the whole series looking like the lights were on but nobody was home and Dino spent it either being irrational, fighting or being jealous of everything that so much as breathes in Rak's direction. They had the subtlety of a sledge hammer and zero sex appeal, which brings me to the next con.
2. Smexy scenes - The slurping guys, so much slurping, so much tongue. The scenes were dubbed and didn't match. It was awful and made so uncomfortable.
3. Music - There's this one scene in episode 9 where Dino goes on a blind date and every single time the camera panned in the direction of the girl, this weird music played. EVERY SINGLE TIME. There's music for smexy time, which I appreciate cos at least I had warning and could fast forward the slurping.

This series took me weeks of sheer determination to watch and I would not recommend.

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If you dont like to be fucking confused dont watch it.

The story makes fucking zero sense.
The characters are horrible written there is no chemistry and its either awkward or really cringe.
As someone in comments said i agree the best two characters are Chalam and his pet snake.
I am sorry but from ep 4 to ep 5 there is so many things that seems to be missed.
The characters from the ep1 quickly dissapear and not or rarely appears and when they do they add up story making even more zero sense. I dropped this cuz it makes me angry with all the questions i have been left with.
No hate to the actors they are probally good at their job its just the one who wrote that-what were they thinking?
I hope for those who will watch this till the end i hope the story give you the anwsers.

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The series was so so... It wasn't that good to rewatch.... I really thought that this series will show Pepper's talent as an actor but i think the story with no sane purpose of it make his talent go to waste i saw his acting before and i must say the plot, the atmosphere of whole series and the no purpose story make him disappear in the series.... While he was main lead and people should get interested in his character but the series didn't justify him... I hope he get some actual and brilliant work good enough for his talent....

As viewers didn't find any purpose of this series some of the bl fans get quiet disappointed with the whole series including everything about it and I'm definitely one of them.

Ruk was heartbroken and he start date Dino after some time and that was the whole thing... They didn't make any kind of drama in the series or a mood that'll engage viewers to watch more.... Even the kissing scenes were too pushy like they're forced to kiss or they're too horny to stop themselves...

I hope they'll work on their skills and give the actors the best as they deserve....

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Blank Stare

I don't really know how to review this without giving away everything. There isn't much of a story, once the basic plot is revealed (in the first and second episodes) it's pretty obvious what will happen. So without spoilers, the acting was not good.
Or the director made horrible choices and the actors did what he told them. No way to know for sure. Rak, one of the MLs was so blank that he looked stupid. Honestly, minus one or two scenes where he cried and once when he laughed, he just stared blankly at everyone around him all the time. No matter the situation, he just stared. He didn't speak, there wasn't any reason for the blank stares with no dialogue, it was just ... bad. I think the intention was meant to be that he looked innocent and didn't have any kind of bad intention but it just came off as him being too stupid to understand or not having any kind of personality.

There wasn't much chemistry between the two MLs. Mostly because Rak always looked like he had no idea what was happening. There was one exception to his weird face blankness, just before the first NC scene (I wouldn't call it NC really, but I guess the first sexy scene) between the two, Rak actually does not have a blank face. For this one, he looks like he totally knows what is going to happen and is anticipating. This leads me to believe that the director was the problem, not the actor, but I can't be sure. Another weirdness was that Dino, the other ML, seemed to need constant reassurance during the sexy moments. He kept asking how he was doing. I don't know about everyone else, but in my experience, if you're asking while you're doing, you're expending too much energy on the wrong things. Focus is important. I found that strange, but not bad. As far as Rak's reaction, "Dino is the best" with an almost comically wide eyed stare, was the best he could do, but the scene wasn't sexy, it was distracting and cringy. Later Dino was kissing him with so much tongue, it just made me want to wash my face.

Seekram (Rak's ex best friend) was creepy to say the least, but I'm not sure if that was bad acting or just poor directorial choices. Mek (the ex-boyfriend) was just a loser, but not necessarily a bad actor. In fact, Seekram and Mek weren't awesome, but they weren't terrible at their parts. None of the support roles were as weird as the main roles. The guest roles were plentiful. Seriously, they found people from a lot of BLs to come and be on screen for a few minutes without having much to say or anything to the story. Just cameos, I guess. Not really sure why they opted for that. To draw attention to the show? Who knows. Anyway, the story wasn't all that great and sometimes the acting was just cringe, so the show didn't really hit well for me. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good.

The story is so predictable as to be boring and the jokes were too obvious to be funny. The OST was decent, but I never put too much weight into the music. Because of the predictability and lack of plot outside of the romance, this show has low rewatch value. If you like just a fluffy love story with not a lot of acting ability, this one is for you. I heard some of the support roles will have shows of their own, and I'm interested to see if they are any better than this one.

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Bury the Dinosaur

There is really not much, if anything, to love about Dinosaur Love. The only reason I even took an interest in it initially was because of Pepper who I liked in Love in the Air. But I found that I wasn't a fan of either his character or acting in this series, and I saw far more of his tongue than I ever wanted to. This isn't even one of those dramas that could have been better if X, Y, Z was different. This is one that probably would have been better off left on the cutting room floor in it's entirety.

The plot is completely nonsensical. It jumps from point to point without necessarily wrapping things up and the transitions are abrupt. The beginning with Mek and See-Kram getting together and cheating on Rak was poorly done. Why either of them chose to betray their friend and lover was not well explained. The fact that they both came back begging for forgiveness was pretty rich of them, particularly Mek considering he'd tried to rape Rak. That mess really only served to make Rak single and available to get together with Dino, but could have been utilized far more wisely to establish the characters and build on them. There are a few plot holes that are more annoying that they're not explained than anything terribly critical and multitude of unanswered questions. The passage of time is not well established either. It would have been nice with some events to know how much time had passed just to get a grasp on how quickly things were progressing. The ending, if you stop at Episode 8 is jarring and doesn't feel like a conclusion. The pacing was all over the place and generally just frustrating. I got to episode 6 and very nearly dropped this drama because I was so done with it. Not that I got anything out of finishing it. It really wasn't worth it.

Dinosaur Love suffers from an overinflated cast. There are so many supporting and guest characters that it got really hard to keep all of them straight, especially Dino's multitude of friends. There was no need for all of them and they took away time that could have been better spent trying to sort out the mess of a storyline. There was also a tendency for characters either pop up unexpectedly after being absent for a while or just disappearing. After apologizing and saying that he would win Rak back, Mek was never seen again. See-Kram is last seen in the hospital and then is absent for multiple episodes before suddenly popping up to ask for Rak's forgiveness. Guy had a mental break down and was suicidal last we saw him, but suddenly he's out and about and fine? Unsurprisingly the few ladies of the cast were completely underutilized. Sammy as Plabu was there for the jokes and Michelle as Please was present to be a "rival" for Dino's affection, but not really, and once she and Rak had their talk, she was another one who disappeared. I will never not be disappointed when they do that. If you're going to cast women, use them.
-Dino simply looked too old to believably be in college. I think the story would have worked better with him having already graduated from a realistic point of view. He was a weird combination of red and green flag moments. He had moments where he was an absolute green flag like when Rak offered to be his boyfriend in a panic after almost being raped and he declined. But he had other moments where he pushed Rak's boundaries and was pushy in general. He did generally back off, but sometimes Rak had to say it more than once. His temper was also a serious concern. It took very little to set him off and make him turn physical and that was not addressed in a satisfactory way. Also, what exactly was Dino a part of? That's never established and once that point was no longer useful, it was thrown out, but I was genuinely curious if he was part of a gang or just a good old fashioned thug.
-Rak's whole personality almost was him being cute and that got old really fast. He was this odd combination of naive and innocent and yet at the same time, not. I will give him credit for his consistency, once he'd made a decision, he really didn't waver. And despite his kind and innocent nature, he never led any of the multitude of men pursuing him on if he wasn't interested in them. Why he had that many men interested in him in the first place, I cannot begin to fathom. While I generally would commend his honesty, there were times where he kept secrets from Dino despite knowing it would cause conflict since Dino hated lies and secrets. While I have no doubt that Dino's temper was the primary reason, it's something that Rak should have felt comfortable addressing.
-Chalam was moderately amusing initially, but quickly grew boring and repetitive. He just had no personality outside his obsession with omelets and he was featured far too heavily to have that and his manner of talking be his only traits.
-Suea was fairly entertaining and was one of the sole bright spots. Not a great character, but Aomstin was expressive and that helped.

The acting was fairly disappointing. I was not a fan of Pepper here, he didn't suit the role for me. Kong was boring. He lacked any kind of diversity in his expressions and mostly just walked around with this wide-eyed, innocent look. The chemistry between him and Pepper was overall lacking. There were a few moments where I felt a spark, but for the majority of the series I was left unimpressed. Again, Aomstin was entertaining as Suea at moments if nothing else because he knew how to use his facial muscles. Even if a lot of is expression were a bit exaggerated, he had some variety. I love Sammy, but this was such a stupid role she really did not get a chance to shine unfortunately.

The production was lacking a lot. The lighting within scenes was off at times with one angle being bright and another being dark. It lacked consistency. The comedic sound effects were severely overused and had me hitting mute more than once. That horrible bird sound was used so much. The music was extremely generic and at times annoying. The transitions were also very poorly done. They'd go from relatively intense music to something perky and upbeat which did not work. The opening credit song wasn't bad though and I ended up kind of liking it.

I can't recommend this drama in any way. It was a positive chore to get through and I don't feel like I gained anything from it other than disappointment and lost time. Go find something better to watch and avoid this one.

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Most Disappointing Watch of 2023

There is no myths here; that went extent along with the dinosaurs. Instead, it is a jumbled incoherent mess of disorganized shifts of scenes packed with individuals for the most part that are astonishingly unlikable, dumb as a box of rocks, naïve, and caricatures. Some are decidedly despicable creatures as well.

The whole universe of this story centers around one of the densest characters I have ever seen. Not only is he naïve and remains so throughout, but he is also the biggest milqutoast and nebbish individual ever in any BL. It was exacerbating to watch him not be able to fend for himself in any meaningful way, with conviction and simply ‘forgive’ people for astonishing bad transgressions against him without making it very clear how he really felt or where he stood. He gives a new definition to the term wimp. I am talking about, of course, the apple of so many guys’ eye for whom I simply could not figure out why. Rak (Kong Montree) who consistently walks around looking lost and functioning in a dream world of his own making. To say he is naïve is to be kind to him. It goes deeper than that. It is as if he wears a sign on himself that says, “Yes, I am really this clueless and as dumb as I look. So go ahead and use me. I really won’t figure it out but oh when I do, I will simply forgive you and move on. Thanks.” For example, his boyfriend had been cheating on him for a while with his own best friend. His passive acceptance of this along with his wounded look made it appear as if it was his cross to bear, and he wore it almost like a badge of honor. When he finally breaks up with him, he allows and tacitly accepts his former boyfriend to visit and harass him without making it abundantly clear that it is finally over, period. At one point, his former boyfriend attempts to rape Rak, and still, Rak forgives him.

Read the complete article here-

https://the-bl-xpress.com/2024/01/05/dinosaur-love-series-review-ep-1-to-8-final-story-ep-910/#more-14438

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I had fun

I'm not sure why the rating on this show is so low. Then again I haven't read the reviews. I thought this was a pretty standard Thai bl and I enjoyed it. The two leads were mildly problematic but it didn't trigger my annoyance or my red flag alarm system. That was a bit surprising because Rak has a childish air about him that I generally would have found super cringe and Dino is stupid aggressive at times. But it was ok, for me. The only time I super cringe was at the kiss scenes. My God. Who directed them to kiss like that?! It was like watching overly horny teenagers make out - not something I ever want to see. All that tongue ...

Anyway, it was decent to me. A solid 7.5-8. But it seems a lot of people didn't like it which just shows - to each their own.

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