Anonymous Rex

Dinosaurs didn't die out. They live among us, in disguise. And some of them are private detectives. That's the premise of Anonymous Rex, written by Joe Menosky and based on the book by Eric Garcia. The show successfully blends fantasy with hard boiled detective drama, moving at a brisk pace from start to finish. I think it works best because of the matter-of-fact tone of it all. The show takes itself seriously enough without becoming a spoof of the PI genre. This a detective show that just happens to include dinosaurs in holographic costumes. With such a fantastic premise, suspension of disbelief takes a little work. But the show pulls it off thanks to some very crisp writing, nifty direction, and excellent performances from the cast. Every actor is spot-on for their character, with some nice performances turned in by Faye Dunaway and Isaac Hayes as members of a dinosaur council. While the two hour movie stands alone, it also sets up what would be a terrific weekly series. Dino For Hire? Sounds like a stretch. But it works, and works surprisingly well.

In case you didn't know, the dinosaurs didn't become extinct, they developed holographic disguises and now live among us. These disguises don't work very well, and in the two hours of the movie we see quite a few of the dinosaurs running around in public looking like bargain basement CGI versions of the Sleestaks from Land of the Lost, but apparently this has worked to keep their existence a secret for thousands of years. They also get stoned on common household spices. They each have their own scent, which only other dinosaurs can smell. As you might expect, these scents include things like flowers, crabs, and even peaches and creme. They are ruled by various secret councils who sit around and play some sort of dinosaur dominoes in the back of Chinese take out restaurants.

So, you buyin' all that? Okay, then here's the plot.

The story focuses on Vincent Rubio (Trammell) and his partner Ernie Watson (Baldwin), a pair of detectives who uncover a secret dino society which wants to go to war with the humans. Ernie's daughter (the peaches and creme girl) gets kidnapped, and in the movie's most climactic scene Baldwin's head changes into a miniature stegosaurus and he charges the bad guy (imagine an out of shape grandpa playing make believe with the grandkids) and impales him. It actually would have looked more realistic if they would have gone to K-Mart and bought a dinosaur Halloween costume (surely they're on clearance this time of the year?).

The movie takes its ridiculous premise and winks (a lot) and chuckles at it, while at the same time trying to pull off a detective drama. I guess it sort of works on some level, if you're extremely bored and there's nothing else on TV and you you spent all day watching paint dry or something. It also takes dullness to new and unprecedented lows, of course as soon as you see the name "Baldwin" in the credits you know that's a given. The only "excitement" is when either of the female leads show up and you at least get to see an interesting character on screen for a minute or so. Some movies provide us with interesting characters throughout; It would probably be a good idea to watch one of those instead. Maybe you could check out an old episode of the Sci-Fi Channel's Invisible Man series, which was basically the same thing as this except its attempts at humor were successful. And its characters were exciting, and its CGI wasn't comedic, and its plots were interesting, and... Okay, maybe not a good comparison.

The Sci Fi channel puts out a lot of TV movies... many of them are dreaded crap. After seeing this, however, I was rather surprised. This movie wasn't bad at all.

Summary: Dinosaurs didn't all die out after a huge meteor hit the earth. Humans did take over the world (as we all know) and dinosaurs had to adapt. It's now modern day and dinos use sophisticated disguises to look like people and live secretly among us. A sub-society of these dinos wants to start a conflict with humanity because they think that they shouldn't be living like people and that in the long run they can take over the world for the better. A dino detective guy (the main hero and narrator) who has mixed feeling about this issue investigates stuff, and ultimately makes some pretty grand decisions. (an interesting story, I hear there's a book like this)

Good Things: The story is quite intriguing. The special effects look pretty good, and they are not used often (this is important or it ruins a film). The acting is decent, too. The film is edited incredibly well: The way visuals and sounds are shuffled and put together at times gives the film a real erie/awesome feel (a 'Fight Club' kinda weird I'd say).

Not So Good: There's some loose ends, some implausible stuff (but hey, its a science fiction movie..), and a rather strange ending. Nothing that bad though.

Of course someone is sure to badmouth this movie and call it complete garbage. That's their right... but I invite them to see Sci Fi's 'Raptor Island'. THAT movie, my friends, is the utter crap. It deserves something like a 2 out of 100. Bad story, bad acting, horrid special effects, all around awful. You might not be able to watch it to the end. THEN compare it to this... you'll be amazed. So please don't compare this to The Matrix or Saving Private Ryan: don't forget that it's a TV movie.

So... if you're sitting around at home and you want to see an interesting and entertaining little TV movie, give this a shot. It's one of the few rare Sci Fi movies worth watching.

Having not read any of the novels, I don't feel that I can supply a fully-informed critique; however I can provide a critique of the piece as a piece of filmed entertainment.

I'm usually disappointed by most SciFi fare, but I checked this one out on the basis of the reviews that the novels had gotten.

I was less than impressed by the script. For months I had heard what a funny and entertaining piece of work the books were, but that value failed to manifest on the screen. The initial discouragement of 'a modern-day dinosaur-detective, pursuing his career disguised as a human in a rubber costume' failed to be salvaged from the execution of the screenplay. While the 'rubber-suit idea had been updated, the script and the actors' performances didn't seem to be in on the joke - the voice-overs were dire, and the story wasn't funny or humorous, just contrived.

In the end, this film was no better than the average broken-genre absurdity that the SciFi Channel has been broadcasting over the past several years: It was just a bland disappointment manufactured by a network that either doesn't understand genre television or has bent so far over to broaden their audience that they've alienated their original constituents with 'family fun' like this feature.

I expected this to be one of those B-movies made with a big heart and the glint in the eye; silly but enjoyable. However, I think this is above B-level. It's actually a decent sci-fi action.

The story - dinosaurs surviving and hiding among humans (especially since they were killed off as dragons in medieval times), and now getting quite tired of always having to pretend to be something they're not - is rather interesting. The special effects aren't state of the art, but they're not bad.

It's not great, but it's good, enjoyable and made with humour. All in all, very watchable!