Theodore Rex

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.

From watching only the trailer to Theodore Rex, you would think this is a bad buddy cop comedy with Whoopi Goldberg and a guy in a dinosaur costume. That is true, but this is mostly a futuristic story, which looks a lot like Batman Forever with it's direction style and weird character designs. It was mismarketed, and should have been marketed as a futuristic tale, instead of just a lame cop comedy. Whether or not this movie is mismarketed, it's still a horrible movie.

In the future, dinosaurs have been brought back to life through amazing technology, and they talk and walk around like humans. Teddy is a dinosaur detective who is never taken seriously, but after a dinosaur is murdered, he's given the case to work on, but he has to be partners with the toughest cop of them all, Katie Coltrane (Whoopi Goldberg). It's up to this mismatched duo to solve the murder, and it's up to the audience to stay awake long enough to make it through this piece of crud.

Teddy starts the picture as a normal acting character, but by the end he is unbearable to listen to. For some reason along with being a detective, he's also a bad comedian and a bad impersonator. He does imitations of famous people and accents, and has some truly awful lines. Whoopi blames him for farting and he says, "It's not my butt trumpet!" Wow! What a puerile, immature line, even for a kid's movie of this caliber. Whoopi is also annoying and rude to everyone. I was hoping Teddy would bite her head off the entire length of the film.

This movie never knew what it wanted to be. When the futuristic scenes and action occur, there is no comedy or humor. In any non-action scenes, the characters try to be as funny as they can, which just results in nonstop straight faced boredome. The action scenes don't work as they're too weird and not violent enough, and as stated earlier, the comedy is just a bunch of massacred jokes. Nothing ever works here.

Having a dinosaur/human detective duo seems like a pretty original movie, if nothing else. Nope! This movie is a huge rip-off of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Just replace dinosaurs with cartoons, and set it in the future, and it's the exact same plot. A man is killed, a dinosaur is killed. A dinosaur and detective solve the murder, a toon and detective solve the murder. The bad guys in Roger Rabbit are Christopher Lloyd and weasels. The bad guys here are a guy who sounds like Christopher Lloyd and guys who act just like the weasels. The club scene in Roger Rabbit where Jessica Rabbit walks down the stage is imitated with dinosaurs. This is a huge rip-off of a much better movie!

Overall, this is a bad movie, not even deserving of it's straight to VHS stature.

My rating: 1/2 out of ****. 90 mins. PG for mild violence, language and crude humor.

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.

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.