Ptérodactyles

The movie is developed on the Armenian-Turkish frontier where a students group(Amy Sloan, and a gorgeous Mircea Monroe, among them) and their professor(Cameron Daddo)undergo an archaeological expedition. In a dormant volcano closes an incredible secret, a nest of pterodactyls eggs, accurately preserved, are ready to hatch . Meanwhile a contra-terrorist team led by a tough commander(Coolio) tracks down Armenian dangerous terrorist. Then Pterodactyls spontaneously attack and the humans try desperately to escape and grisly death happen, while the soldiers use their technological weapons.

The movie delivers the goods with hair-rising chills and noisy scares when the Pterodactyls appear savagely stalking its prey and attacking. This is an OK amusing juvenile with thin characters and contrived plot but quite entertaining . It's remarkable for FX recreation the ferocious and carnivorous beast developing a bloodthirsty hunger for human eating. The actors give vigorous physical performances dodging the prehistoric giant birds recreated by the prolific computer generator, as usual. The Pterodactyls, themselves, of course, are the real stars, and they're marvellous terrifying astounding, and quite convincing. The motion picture is professionally produced and directed by Mark L Lester. He's a cool director and producer-American World Pictures- of B movies , his greatest success was during the 80s, when he directed hits , such as ¨Commando, Firestarter, Showdown in Little Tokio and Class of 1984¨ . No for small children for realistic, gory and violent attack scenes. Rating : Average but entertaining.

A great cast is what saves this CGI cheap. Cameron Daddo does the best he can with what he has to work with. Amy Sloan is always interesting to watch. Come on Sci-Fi, give us some deeper plots. Don't underestimate our intelligence..The Sci-Fi channel is pumping out these 2 million dollar movies, and they still can't find the balance between scientific and campy. I have to assume the execs at Sci-Fi think the visuals trump the story, which is too bad. Who watches Star Trek for the effects? I don't even mind bad special effects, I just wish these Original Sci-Fi flicks had more depth and less clichés. A bigger budget is not required, only inspiration.

This movie is proof that our Army just isn't ready for a war against dinosaurs. And we should get ready, because terrorists around the world who have access to this fill now know our weakness. The guys in this movie shot so much led into the air i found myself wondering why some of it isn't raining down on them and killing them. So many of the characters were narrowly avoiding death and i hated them all so much that i started to make up fantasies in my head about cool ways they could die, their own bullets coming down being one of the best.

During the course of this 2005 summer blockbuster you see these peaceful winged dinosaurs get some really bad press. Now i myself have only once met a Pterodactly so i can't speak for all of them but what i do know is that they are not found of eating people. Don't believe me, you could always google it. They ate fish. They cannot fly fast enough to rip off a man's torso from his legs, and if their wing hit a guys head i assure you both the guy and the dactyl would be on the ground screaming together rather then the guy's head coming off. That aside, i really like it when people come apart in movies. As for the bullets, dinosaurs came from a time before bullets, they don't believe in such things. The power of belief kept them safe from man's weapons. That is one theory i have. The second one is that they had on bullet proof vests. The dinosaurs were terribly rendered so they could have been wearing dresses and it would have been a struggle to tell.

Why didn't i rate this a one you ask? I hope your asking cause i'm gunna tell you. Because Coolio is in it. Coolio is the only rapper turned actor i like in a movie. After watching his performance in Dracula 3,000 (see my review for that if you dare) i can't hate anything he touches. I take that back, i can hate them, cause i sure hated both this movie and Dracula 3000, but i won't ever rate one of his movies a 1.

So Don Rumsfeld, this movie better be playing 24/7 in the pentagon as a warning to you all... get ready for Muslim extremists riding unstoppable dactyls into things. Bullets can't stop them, nothing can. Nothing... except coolio.

Don't get my wrong it's not all bad – there is a good few minutes when a scantily clad blonde runs through the jungle.

Here's the story line, I will try to give it to you straight, with an unbiased approach – a bunch of annoying US students and their dumbass lecturer are for some unknown reason in Romania when they decide it is a super idea to explore a volcano deep in some forest. Only when they arrive, they spend their time running away from CGI Pterodactyls, which have just hatched (probably out of an N64). But that's not all they do, they also produce incredibly annoying dialogue, for example after many of the students have been eaten by these winged Nintendo-graphics beasts, the lecturer sighs 'what am I going to tell their parents?' and in another scene, when the blonde hottie has had enough of all the fun and antics that always accompanies running away from Pterodactyls, she expresses 'I just wanna go hooommmee!' and talking about a missing nerd - 'you won't find him, a Pterodactyl took him, I told you 10 times, why don't you believe me??!!'. Hmmm, i wonder why, doesn't the word extinction mean anything to you?!!

Soon after getting into a spot of trouble with the old dino's, the idiot students and their lecturer bump into US 'Special Forces Team', more like 'Special Needs Team'. Unfortunately for them the Special Forces Team are just as lame as themselves, it doesn't appear that the producer spent a lot of time casting for this movie, as the team looks like a bunch of store clerks. Sure their people skills may have proved invaluable if the dinosaurs could actually converse in English, but unfortunately for them - that wasn't the case that day. The team may have been lead by Coolio, but this flick is no gangster's paradise. I'm sorry, I had to sneak that one in.

After a romance is born between a student (Kate) and the lecturer, there is a scene where the a Pterodactyl flies away with the student and the lecturer does what any caring, loving partner would do, he picks up the nearest gun and starts shooting rapidly in the general direction of the beast and the student, whilst shouting 'Kate! Kate!'. Hilarious stuff. After another student has been sliced up a little, the others go and see if she is OK (obviously not, being attacked by a dinosaur and all)but anyway, her eyes are still open and you can see her chest rise and fall with breathing, but they shout 'she's gone, leave her', a few minutes later they unsurprisingly hear her release a loud scream, then one of them brightly announces 'it must be Kate!' and another adds 'yea, I know I can hear her screaming!', Please! Are you serious? who writes these scripts?! – a 3 year old kindergarten kid with an over-active imagination?

The Special Forces Team spend their time shooting the Pterodactyls for hours on end, they may as well have been shooting water pistols or cap guns as the bullets had no effect, but as they are under-cover store clerks, who can blame them for their naivety & false optimism? Finally, if you have chosen to ignore all the reviews, and do decide to view this monster-rosity of a movie, pay close attention to the scene where they are making their way across a ravine simply by lassoing a sheep.....yes, i said a sheep, and using a rope to climb/shuffle across. Isn't it amazing how an adult can have all their body weight hanging from a rope, yet the rope is slack and their muscles non-flexed? I thought so.

At the end is where Coolio puts the cherry on the cake where he releases this humdinger of a line: 'It is time to dance baby, and I am your DJ', but instead of dancing, he breaks his promise and at the same time lives up to the song - guns don't kill Pterodactyl's, rappers do.

I gave this movie 2*'s to save the rating of 1* on the chance that there are worse movies out there. It's possible. The acting was horrible, but I've seen worse (usually when they decide they need *real* athletes to play roles). The special effects were bad, but I've seen worse (they're usually 50 years old though). The dialog was ridiculous (trying to remember when I've seen worse, but nothing comes to mind -- oh wait, maybe some of the dialog in the recent Star Wars movies). As giant-monster-terrorizing-helpless-people movies go - they're not known for deep character development - this one stood out as being exceptionally bad, as none of the characters behave at any time in any way that a normal human would reasonably be expected to behave under the circumstances. That's quite an accomplishment in itself. This movie might have been funny with a roomful of good friends and lots of tequila. Unfortunately, I had neither at the time.