Dinosaurs with head-mounted laser cannons have invaded Earth from outerspace; in the war against them, Tommy meets Stacey and finds that common bond of romance and love sparked out of conflict. They escape the fighting and share stories of their own and other adventures, however it is not long till the war catches them up – as well as those other great foes, familiarity and the mundane.
This is a hard film t really capture but it is also one that is hard to dislike. It opens with a battle against T-Rex's with futuristic weapons, heads deep underwater, has a chase sequence involving a bear, but ultimately is about a couple trying to find themselves in the middle of all of it. It is wonderfully absurd throughout but yet mostly has enough at the heart to make it work. I say mostly because it is not possible to say that it all works, because it doesn't. The film doesn't totally manage to make the move from the absurd into the mundane, in a way that sells the central idea of this couple; I wanted it to do it better but it did seem that this was an awkward bridge moment for the film and one that it didn't successfully manage.
That said, the rest still does because it has this intense cheerful feel to it which lifts you with the moment – so even though (for example) the second act did not make the emotional connection to me that I thought it should have done, I did still get caught up in the wonderful silliness of the piece. The impact of the music is a big factor in this. It is cheering, rousing, and frankly sells every second of it with its crowd pleasing swelling effect; it works very well and in a way the music sets the tone which allows the viewer to accept the silly setting, slightly cheesy effects, and generally nonsensical ideas. The film itself does have these flaws within what it does, and it does need the viewer to go along with it from the start, but I enjoyed it a great deal and found the ambition and ballsy approach to be more than enough to carry me along with it.
