Theodore Rex (1995)

While not quite reaching the same level of infamy as some other b-movies (such as, say, The Swarm, Star Trek V, or Howard the Duck), no one out there can argue that Theodore Rex hasn’t earned a place in the annals of Kwality Cinema. Besides its own…inherent charms, Theodore Rex is one of the most expensive films made for the straight-to-video market, if not the most (it was originally meant for a theatrical release, but some bright young executive or more likely divine intervention stepped in). Then there’s the fact that it has an unwilling and grudging performance by a perpetually annoyed Whoopi Goldberg, who was kept from bailing out of the production by the threat of being sued for breach of contract. Whoopi does her best to derail the production by giving a performance worthy of high school theatre, but the scriptwriter, the director, and, well, everyone else involved has already done her work for her.

What made me a believer in Theodore Rex’s near-divine crapiness was not the lousy acting or the inane dialogue or even the fact that when you reach at least a couple of points in the movie you can see the tech crew, although these did much to reconfirm my faith…no, I saw the light almost right away with the prologue. Now prologues are tempting things. Since Star Wars it seems that movie makers, particularly those working with low budgets, think that slapping a prologue on their little magnum opus instantly makes it an epic adventure. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way, especially when, in this case, your movie is set up as a detective story and the prologue happens to give away in nauseating detail what passes for the mystery. It also doesn’t create a feeling on confidence among the audience when the prologue kicks off with a mind-numbingly stupid shot at metaphysical cleverness like “Once Upon A Time In The Future,” capitalizes words and phrases like ‘Police’ and ‘Master Plan,’ and reveals that the villain’s name is Elizar Cain…excuse me, Elizar Kane. Kane’s *snort* plan is one even Cobra Commander or Skeletor would reject as nutty and impractical: he wants to launch a nuclear warhead from his compound (called ‘New Eden’), starting a new Ice Age that would wipe out most life on the planet, most especially the human race, and, using pairs of animals he keeps frozen in his compound, Kane plans to repopulate the planet “creating his own vision of Paradise.”

Now, just to make sure you get this: SOMEONE ACTUALLY GAVE THE GREEN LIGHT TO A SCRIPT BASED ON THIS PLOT!!!!!!!

*ahem* The prologue also mentions two workers who escape from New Eden *giggle* in an attempt to warn the world twenty-four hours before the missile is launched. Remember the twenty-four hours thing, trust me. Anyway, we see one of the workers, a dinosaur, being cornered by Kane’s right-hand man who carries the name Edge (I wonder how many cups of coffee and sleepless nights it took the writer to come up with that gem). As for the dinosaur…well, the special effects in this movie, specifically the dino-people, are very clumsy for a movie of this budget. More distracting, though, is the fact that here and later on intelligent dinosaurs involved in an urban society mimicking that of humanity appear and no explanation is given until about a quarter way through the movie (and even then, it’s a crappy one). Edge dispatches the dinosaur, who offers no real resistance (I have a feeling this had more to do with the limitations of the dinosaur animatronics, which becomes painfully obvious countless times through out the film, than the script, which already has much to answer for) with an…exploding butterfly. Talk about villains being fancy when just a rifle would do.

Next we are introduced to our heroine, Coltraine, in a sub-standard cops-taking-on-a-gang-of-thugs explosion-fest. Coltraine is your standard tough-as-nails-but-with-a heart-of-gold cop (she even has a little street urchin named Sebastian who pops up around her now and then). The several other reviews I’ve read of this film chastise Whoopi for daring to think she could pull off playing an embittered cop. On the contrary, I think Whoopi’s performance here is the film’s one small redeeming factor as well as by far the only convincing thing here, since she’s certainly bitter about being in this movie and letting it show. It just gives the proceedings an air of realism. Anyway, Coltraine and Generic Partner face off a group of inept, “wacky” thugs (who suspiciously act and look a lot like Katana’s two goons from Highlander II) led by…Bud Cort (!). The thugs are pursuing the second worker from New Eden, who is human. Coltraine and Generic Partner defeat them, but can’t save the human from getting kacked. Actually, around here, we get to gleam what is pretty much the movie’s only remotely interesting idea. Through the magical powers of the Exposition Fairy, we learn all cops in the city-called ‘the Grid’-have cybernetic implants (no physical evidence is given of this fact, but anyway…) which allow them to access some sort of ‘shared mind,’ a kind of telepathic version of the Internet. Even though it just remains pretty much a footnote to Coltraine’s character (so much so I can’t help but wonder why it’s even bothered with, except to remind us that this is “Once Upon A Time In The Future”) and it’s never given adequate explanation or detail, it’s not really a half-bad idea to start with, and in a good movie it might have actually led somewhere. However, this is not a good movie; this is Theodore Rex.

We also meet our Coltraine’s will-be partner, Theodore Rex, who does grunt work for the police department but dreams of becoming a detective. Because he is a big bad dinosaur, it’s funny that he owns a small dog, delightful that he’s a self-proclaimed vegetarian, and hilarious that he likes cookies. Ooh, comedy! Oh, and if that isn’t enough to grab your funny bone and bash you over the head with it until your skull caves in, Theodore Rex’s character also comes complete with bad breath jibs, visual gags with his out-of-control tail, and fart jokes. There’s more of these packed in his hellish piece of celluloid than homoerotic descriptions in a Dirk Pitt novel.

As you might expect, a PR ploy (orchestrated by a guy working for Kane…I forget why…recalling small details from this movie hurts me) puts Coltraine and Theodore Rex together in an investigation into the murder of the dinosaur from the New Eden complex. In a really insulting attempt to create a racist subtext, Coltraine objects to working with Theodore because he’s, well, a dinosaur. Frankly, if I had to work with that lame, perpetually farting Barney knock-off who has the voice of the mentally retarded spawn of one of the Olsen twins and the guy who plays Big Bird, I’d be a bit peeved as well.

Coltraine and Theodore start their investigation in the dinosaur district of the city. Now, by this point the viewer learns that Kane had arranged the cloning back from the edge of extinction of various species that exist today but are lost by the time of this movie because it takes place “Once Upon A Time In The Future”(of course, keep in mind that he is going through all this trouble when he’s planning to wipe out most of the life on Earth in *ahem* 24 hours anyway). Among the extinct species Kane brought back was the dinosaur, although how they came to become intelligent and came to mimic human traits is left unexplained. Besides that, when Theodore and Coltraine explore the ‘dinosaur district,’ they come into contact with dinosaurs who have to be old according to a dinosaur’s lifespan which can’t be that short. Even more incredible, the dinosaurs are shown to have already started up a pretty advanced and long-running society, complete with their own religion, social structure, and even sexual fetishes (say it with me: eeeww…), not to mention that a wide and varied number of dinosaurs are depicted. Kane is depicted as a relatively old man in the film. Even if he started cloning dinos straight out of the womb, there’s no way there could be so many of them with a fully developed society to boot.

Anyway, after Theodore is attacked by Bud Cort (why? Even Edge comments on how it doesn’t make any sense), causing Theodore and Coltraine to realize something is up. It also helps that Kane gives away an important part of his plan when the duo come to interview him. Oops. Well, Kane realizes that he’s not been terribly good at keeping that whole “destruction of the human race” thing secret so he takes a hint from the Big Book of Inept Supervillains’ Strategies: take hostages, preferably the loved ones of the protagonists. In their case, Kane abducts the precocious urchin Sebastian and Molly (oh, I forgot to mention her, didn’t I?...It’s better that I don’t, trust me; all you need to know is that she’s Theodore’s girlfriend and a match for him in the teeth-grinding annoyance factor). After tracking down and getting a confession out of the supplier of Edge’s exotic weaponry, in a surreal yet nevertheless stunningly stupid sequence, they finally figure out what the viewer learned at the first few seconds of the movie. There’s more ‘thrilling’ action as Theodore and Coltraine take out Kane’s operation, save the world at the last possible second, and Edge is killed in a random Simpsons-esque explosion (his car hit a billboard, which is enough to cause a really big explosion!) Theodore achieves his dream of becoming an official police detective at a ceremony attended by Coltraine, who over the investigation suddenly (and unconvincingly) developed affection for Theodore…

As my review hopefully revealed, this is a movie whose existence is blight on civilization. While the script does show very slight hints of some original, imaginative thinking here and there, this cinematic abortion is a terrible attempt to blend a kid’s movie about dinosaurs with futuristic cop action-drama, which is pulled off as well as mixing chocolate milk with ketchup. The results are too goofy and annoying for adults, while too boring and high-handed for kids. Look at the “humor,” which switches back and forth from bad sexual innuendo (which kids won’t get…well, most of them anyway) to bad breath and fart jokes, which even any self-respecting preteen, much less any adult, would find tiresome and unfunny. This isn’t just a bad children’s movie; it’s a clear and chilling example on what not to do with a camera.