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.

Anonymous Rex is about smart dinosaurs living among humans in holographic costumes. They've been living with us for millions of years and are the dragons of legend. The story is about two PIs that track down a rogue dino organization called the voice of progress who is trying to change the world so dinos rule again. The dinos got high on various herbs, even the carnivorous ones. Some of the rogue cult vaporizes tarragon in a club to try and get the dinos to go on a rampage killing humans and exposing themselves so the dinos will need to come out and fight to protect themselves from the scared and angry humans. The directing was good along with the camera work and dialog. Acting was passable and helped keep the story moving. Subplot, one of the dinos daughters was a real human that wanted to be a dino.

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.

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.

I've read the comments prior to mine (7 or 8 as of this writing). I think some folks put a little too much expectation into these things. This is a SciFi channel effort. They don't get many viewers, so they can't charge much for commercials, so they can't pay much to film an original movie. Question: If any of you dissenters think you can do better, then why don't you have a basic cable channel of your own? Answer: You can't do better.

OK, they used cheap, older generation CG effects. Just 20 years ago you'd have been blown away by them. 60 years ago people would've been peeing in their theater seats. Kids that grew up knowing nothing before Terminator 2 are jaded.

Also, remember that the story is a fantasy. If you can buy into a silly story like The Wizard Of Oz, Harry Potter, or Lord Of The Rings, you're loopy enough to buy this too. The difference between great and lesser fantasy movies depends on budget. If Spiderman was made on half a million bucks, it would've been on SciFi too, with all the complaints I've read here tonight.

Anonymous Rex wasn't that bad, as long as you understand where it came from. Hey, if you were ever entertained by an ignorant show like HEE HAW (which had almost 600 episodes!), this movie is an EPIC!