Theodore Rex

Movies about dinosaurs can be entertaining. So can Whoopi Goldberg movies. But Whoopi AND dinosaurs?

After the first 20 minutes of "Theodore Rex", I had come to one conclusion: this movie is evil. Evil, vile, wicked and reprehensible in its spite for the audience. Nothing this bad is made by accident; this is the visual equivalent of a torture chamber.

First of all, Whoopi does not make good action movies (watch "Fatal Beauty" if you think I'm lying), but the film makers don't care - she's a tough cop here, yet again.

Seen a million cop buddy flicks this week? Well, here's number one million and one, pal.

Don't like cute, humanistic animated dinosaurs since that Spielberg TV show about them? Too bad, here's another one and he's a cop, too!

You one of those people that hates car chases, shoot-outs, sloppy dialogue, boring futuristic FX and seeing talented people (Goldberg, Mueller-Stahl, Roundtree) stuck in a movie that looks like a tax write-off? A BIG tax write-off?

And you read this review all the way to the end. You DESERVE a sequel. Seriously.

No stars, not a one. And if they really make a sequel to "Theodore Rex", Hollywood deserves to be attacked a whole herd of wise-cracking foam rubber dinosaurs.

Now, I'd pay to see that.

On many occasions, depending on my mood and what kind of a day I've had, I look for known bad movies for the fun of laughing at the result. I've seen the silly shark movies, and I'm a fan of Plan 9. But this movie doesn't even rise to that level. It's awful. The dinosaur costume is cute, but the script is constantly trying to be clever (and fails), the premise could have been clever (but failed), and the story -- no, that didn't even have the potential for failure. Until now, I've loved any movie with dinosaurs, no matter how bad. Until now. It must be hard to make a movie that can't even entertain fans of bad movies. Maybe we should give them credit for that, I don't know. By the way, Whoopie Goldberg didn't want to do this thing. She was forced to because of a lawsuit. Maybe the whole point was to punish her for something we don't know about. If so, her attorney should have appealed to the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause.

I was babysitting a family of three small children for a night and their mother gave me this to show for them having just grabbed it at Wal-Mart earlier in the week. All three children actually got physically ill while watching it. I'm pretty sure it was the pizza they ate, or something they all had picked up from school, but really it could have been this film. Absolutely disgusting. How any one can produce this caliber of trash is beyond me. Fortunately, I turned off the film when I noticed the children were not responding and acting strangely. For any parents out there, I strongly advise you to refrain from letting young children view this movie.

No matter what anyone tells you, there is a mere fact to the word "possession" in film circles -- such as "what possessed you to greenlight this film?" Religion doesn't have anything to do with it, but common sense does. That is, if your head is clear and you are of sound mind to make a judgment.

On many levels I tried to rationalize where this film would entertain....or even interest the average consumer. The star? The story? The unique idea? A buddy movie that kids would love with a dinosaur and a black woman? On, my goodness! I am sure when this was an "idea", it sounded good. But somewhere during the course of development...someone should have pointed out where the idea could not translate into a piece of entertainment anyone would wish to watch or pay for...unless they were very much deeply under the influence of alcohol or drugs and saw something the rest of us could not see.

Regardless, this is a complete mess. Mess, mess - sin and a mess.

Who cares about the plot (what plot?) et al. Whoopie got a paycheck, but I would have been embarrassed to take it. I sure hope she fired her agent/manager/publicist over this career move. Obviously not, she went on to make more bad films. And more bad films. Sad.

Currently, "Theodore Rex" is listed on IMDb's infamous Bottom 100 list. While I would agree it was a bad and very misguided project, I cannot understand why there is this much hatred for the film. Sure, it's bad...but I've seen a lot worse!! At least it has interesting sets and dinosaur costumes...though little else. I'd consider putting it on the Bottom 1000 list (if they ever come up with one). As for the costumes, the look like they were literally recycled from the "Dinosaurs" TV series...though unlike the show, the film has little in the way of cleverness, comedy or fun.

The film is set in some sort of weirdo alternate reality but the prologue trying to explain this was completely confusing and unnecessary. Suffice to say, in this sci-fi film, human-like dinosaurs act just like people...and coexist in a human world. Or, at least they try to coexist but the humans look down on their cold- blooded friends. Because of this, when a cop (Whoopi Goldberg) is assigned to work with the very first dinosaur police detective, she is less than thrilled. And, by this point, her feeling is pretty much the audience's.

The bottom line is that the story is dull and often stupid. But the film isn't the most boring film I've ever seen--not that this is a glowing endorsement. I think that instead of making this super- expensive direct-to-video release, the filmmakers would have been much better off just making a "Dinosaurs" movie...it couldn't help but be better and less annoying.