Tammy and the T-Rex

I saw the uncut version of this film at an independent theatre tonight, and let me just say: this film is as bad as Troll 2, and much more entertaining. The whole theatre was laughing throughout, and I am definitely planning on making my friends watch this. I cannot speak for the value of the cut version, as I have not seen it and cannot imagine how the film would function in that state. 10/10 for entertainment value, 0/10 for artistic value; don't watch this if you plan to take it at all seriously.

I came across this CHEESY flick while watching USA up all night one sat eve and had to laugh...ok the plot was lame and the acting was by no stretch of the imagination amazing, but for late nite laughs how can you go wrong? Plus i went to the same high school as Denise Richards and had no clue that this was a movie she was in until she came onscreen...so of course that made it watchable for me. However for any other joe smoe if you are looking for a little laugh and serious cheese this is the flick for you....

I bought this film merely because of Denise Richards, who I think is one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood. I was deceived by the title and the picture, both of which made me think it was a movie for children. Boy, was I wrong. This is a Trash movie, what made me glad that I bought it. Now I can place it among the other titles of my B-Movies collection. Is this a bad movie? Of course it is. Surprisingly as it may be for most people, it was made that way ON PURPOSE. And, what may sound even more surprising is that some people (such as myself) really do appreciate this genre of film. Trash, B-movie, whatever you call it, are based in 4 concepts: Hot chick (Denise Richards couldn't be more appropriate), bad acting, cheesy special effects and a ridiculous script. This movie succeeds in all of them.

Thus, considering the logic of those who are into Trash movies, this one deserves an 8 or 9 out of 10. For the rest of you, who just can't get what is to enjoy in a truly bad movie, I guess it would be 1 out of 10, considering a conventional rating system.

There are 2 kinds of bad dinosaur movies; the painful ones and the fun ones. This is one of the latter. I think Tammy and the T-Rex was kind of destined to be a guilty pleasure of mine from the very beginning. It hits so many notes for things I enjoy and resonate with, most of them subjective, that I just can't help but love it. I love the 90s culture, I love dinosaurs, I love camp, I love Terry Kiser, I love Denise Richards and I love Beauty & the Beast stories. I was also a leather jacket wearing dork in High School who briefly dated a cheerleader at one point and have a flamboyantly gay close friend. This movie has all of those things and you're telling me I'm not supposed to enjoy it? Yeah, right.

God damn it, I don't care that the editing is laughably bad, with audio clips repeating themselves and scenes frequently ending abruptly and awkwardly. I don't care that the story makes absolutely no sense, I don't care if the film obviously uses a human actor in an obvious $20 costume whenever Michael/T-Rex needs to use his hands or we need a closeup on his moving feet, I don't care that the cast overacts to a degree that John Travolta would be envious of (Actually, this may be a bonus.) I don't care that the music feels like something off of a bad Power Rangers episode. Honestly, the only thing I really care about is the film's censoring of its graphic and brutal violence. The cuts here are obvious and laughable, made for the sole creative decision of marketing to a dinosaur hungry young audience fresh off of Jurassic Park. Never mind that these are 2 completely different movies targeted towards completely different target audiences, apparently all dinosaur movies are the same. While Tammy & the T-Rex still retains a lot of the zany, bonkers humor and manic, over-the-top energy of the original vision, stripping it of its violence just makes it lose a lot of its identity.

I'm surprised how much I really dug the characters of this film. No, the acting isn't the best (Or the 2nd best...Or the 3rd best...Or the 26th best), but I do really like these characters. Denise Richard's Tammy is lovably bubbly and energetic, Theo Forsett's Byron is charming and funny, Paul Walker's Michael is a lot of goofy fun in the limited screentime he has and Terry Kiser chews the scenery as one of those deliciously overacted bad guys we just never get to see any more. I was surprised how emotionally invested I was in this admittedly horribly made film.

A big part of my enjoyment comes from just how much heart this film has. This is the kind of bad movie where everybody on board really believed in the product. Everybody in the cast & crew really wanted to be here and you can tell they had a lot of fun. You can't help but respect the earnestness and humbleness of a movie with a crying T-Rex attending his own funeral. A movie that starts off with a cheer-leading team practicing to "Dinosaur Man" by Simon Stokes and the Black Whip Thrill Band (A song with lyrics like Dinosaur music inside my brain, Sometimes I feel like I'm gonna go insane") It's a very charming movie if nothing else and nobody can take that away from it. Not even repeating sound clips or a T-Rex with obviously human arms.

This joins Idle Hands as one of those insane 90s guilty pleasures that I would honestly love to remake. Turn it into a Troma Entertainment style Horror comedy exploitation like Tromeo & Juliet, Polutrygeist or Class of Nuke 'Em High and this could honestly be really good for the kind of ridiculous, absurd, goofy schlock that it is. Come to mention it, taking the stoner comedy elements of Idle Hands would probably make this even more entertaining. I wonder how much it would take to purchase the rights for this.

One of the greatest "how did they pitch this?" movies I've ever seen. I, somehow, avoided the PG-13 cut all these years and only recently witnessed the new uncut Vinegar Syndrome cut and I can't even imagine how they trimmed down this fairly gory movie into a PG-13. It's filled to the brim with Troma/early Peter Jackson style gore and the tone of the film is very similar as well.

Denise Richards seems to have a reputation as a bad actress by some, but after seeing this, I can't understand it at all, because she commits so hard to the ludicrous premise of her boyfriend's brain being transfered into a mechanical dinosaur that you just want to give her an award of some kind for all her effort. Did I mention that her boyfriend pre-brain into mechanical dinosaur is Paul Walker?

Weekend at Bernie's Terry Kiser shows up as the evil scientist who stole Walker's brain in the first place and John Franklin from Children of the Corn is his assistant and computer wiz.

Tammy and the T-Rex surprises at every turn, makes you laugh, and even makes you root for the relationship between a beautiful high schooler and a mechanical t-rex. If that's not art, I'm not sure what is.