Dinosaur 13

This documentary chronicles how an astounding scientific discovery descended into the madness of academic, governmental, and judicial controversy. While the story of "Sue" -- the most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever found -- is ultimately a happy one in the sense that she's available for public viewing in the Field Museum in Chicago, the journey to get there was one filled with years of legal complications, prison sentences, controversial FBI raids, and the hurt pride of South Dakotans hoping that Sue would remain in the state where she was first found. What emerges is that Sue's discovery ends up being so much more than the actual discovery, raising so many less-interesting issues of property rights and private enterprise in work that's typically the exclusive province of academia.

For kids, the first third of Dinosaur 13, with its story of finding Sue on that brutally hot August afternoon in the Badlands of South Dakota and the obvious joy and passion these paleontologists felt upon realizing their find, is thoroughly engrossing, especially for the budding paleontologists of the family. However, as the movie gets into the federal government stepping in, and all the court cases that happened after, it's easy to imagine kids' interest waning. Not that the story isn't interesting, harrowing, and tragic, because it is, but the difference between the discovery and the discussions of the gray areas in American property law as it pertains to public and Native American lands is the difference between seeing Sue reassembled and towering menacingly over museum-goers and seeing parts of Sue kept in boxes seized and guarded by the government.