Theodore Rex

Movies about dinosaurs can be entertaining. So can Whoopi Goldberg movies. But Whoopi AND dinosaurs?

After the first 20 minutes of "Theodore Rex", I had come to one conclusion: this movie is evil. Evil, vile, wicked and reprehensible in its spite for the audience. Nothing this bad is made by accident; this is the visual equivalent of a torture chamber.

First of all, Whoopi does not make good action movies (watch "Fatal Beauty" if you think I'm lying), but the film makers don't care - she's a tough cop here, yet again.

Seen a million cop buddy flicks this week? Well, here's number one million and one, pal.

Don't like cute, humanistic animated dinosaurs since that Spielberg TV show about them? Too bad, here's another one and he's a cop, too!

You one of those people that hates car chases, shoot-outs, sloppy dialogue, boring futuristic FX and seeing talented people (Goldberg, Mueller-Stahl, Roundtree) stuck in a movie that looks like a tax write-off? A BIG tax write-off?

And you read this review all the way to the end. You DESERVE a sequel. Seriously.

No stars, not a one. And if they really make a sequel to "Theodore Rex", Hollywood deserves to be attacked a whole herd of wise-cracking foam rubber dinosaurs.

Now, I'd pay to see that.

Currently, "Theodore Rex" is listed on IMDb's infamous Bottom 100 list. While I would agree it was a bad and very misguided project, I cannot understand why there is this much hatred for the film. Sure, it's bad...but I've seen a lot worse!! At least it has interesting sets and dinosaur costumes...though little else. I'd consider putting it on the Bottom 1000 list (if they ever come up with one). As for the costumes, the look like they were literally recycled from the "Dinosaurs" TV series...though unlike the show, the film has little in the way of cleverness, comedy or fun.

The film is set in some sort of weirdo alternate reality but the prologue trying to explain this was completely confusing and unnecessary. Suffice to say, in this sci-fi film, human-like dinosaurs act just like people...and coexist in a human world. Or, at least they try to coexist but the humans look down on their cold- blooded friends. Because of this, when a cop (Whoopi Goldberg) is assigned to work with the very first dinosaur police detective, she is less than thrilled. And, by this point, her feeling is pretty much the audience's.

The bottom line is that the story is dull and often stupid. But the film isn't the most boring film I've ever seen--not that this is a glowing endorsement. I think that instead of making this super- expensive direct-to-video release, the filmmakers would have been much better off just making a "Dinosaurs" movie...it couldn't help but be better and less annoying.

On many occasions, depending on my mood and what kind of a day I've had, I look for known bad movies for the fun of laughing at the result. I've seen the silly shark movies, and I'm a fan of Plan 9. But this movie doesn't even rise to that level. It's awful. The dinosaur costume is cute, but the script is constantly trying to be clever (and fails), the premise could have been clever (but failed), and the story -- no, that didn't even have the potential for failure. Until now, I've loved any movie with dinosaurs, no matter how bad. Until now. It must be hard to make a movie that can't even entertain fans of bad movies. Maybe we should give them credit for that, I don't know. By the way, Whoopie Goldberg didn't want to do this thing. She was forced to because of a lawsuit. Maybe the whole point was to punish her for something we don't know about. If so, her attorney should have appealed to the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause.

From the What Was She Thinking? file: Whoopi Goldberg plays a cop in the future who is teamed with a talking dinosaur (!) for a crime case involving a madman who wants to start another ice-age. Straight-to-tape oddity is embarrassing and ridiculous, a high-concept in search of itself. Apparently this was a labor of love for its writer-director, Jonathan Betuel (who also served as one of the producers); sadly, the end results are anemic, to be charitable. Goldberg's mere presence on-screen can often spark good will and laughter no matter how poor the script, but here she's drowning and you can see the unfunny results. NO STARS from ****

Ever since I started visiting this site, and voting for movies, I have never given any movie a rating of 1. Even the disturbing "Dance! Workout with Barbie" got a 2. There is a reason for this.

Any time I find myself watching what I think is a really bad movie, I have to stop and ask myself the following question: "Is this movie really as bad as the horrific soul-sucking beast that is 'Theodore Rex'?" And I've never been able to answer "yes".

I would give anything within reason to know what crackhead said "Hey! Let's remake 'Blade Runner' with Barney in the Harrison Ford Role!" and decided it was a good idea to actually spend the time and money to commit it to film. Furthermore, I want to know what the hell kind of market they were going to sell this towards if it hadn't gone strait to video. This is that rare monster: a movie that is way too violent for kids and way too insanely stupid for adults. I'd ask "what were they THINKING?" but in this case, it might actually be redundant.

Anyhow, all you need to know is that you should only expose yourself to this monstrosity if you're one of the five or six rabid fans of "Howard the Duck", or if you are curious to see the most Evil Insane movie of all time, or you want to REALLY punish yourself.