#1- Review of Theodore Rex

    

The Movie: Theodore Rex. 1996- Written and directed by Jonathan Betuel. Staring Whoopi Goldberg, Armin Mueller-Stahl and George Newbern

Telekinetic dinosaurs. Fucking Telekinetic dinosaurs! This movie offhandedly introduces Telekinetic Dinosaurs around the 45 min mark. So I'll go ahead and spoil this review and tell you YES you should absolutely go watch this movie. But I'm getting a head of myself.

The movie opens with this title card, Which I feel like speaks to the quality of the film more than the very famous poster (with Whoopi and a Dinosaur that makes it look like these two characters are lovers rather than a buddy cop duo) ever could

So anyway. Once upon a time in the future, we cut to a dystopian(?) world where dinosaurs have been revived (albeit to a size closer to human proportions.) A dinosaur has been murdered, and a crooked police chief assigns the android(?) Katie Coltrane (Whoopi Goldberg) and the token dinosaur police officer Teddy Rex (Bruce Lanoil and Pons Maar) 

This kicks off a mad romp that plays on literally every buddy cop trope you could imagine:

1. The straight laced cop learning to loosen up.

2. The wacky cop learning real police work.

3. A wacky dressing up to go undercover montage

4. The partners becoming friends and teasing each other like middle school boys for having feelings.

5 Good Cop/Bad Cop that goes wrong.

6. A scene where a dog mugs for the camera.

7. Warehouses

8. A medal ceremony 

So the duo track down the killer, Elizar Kane (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who we learn is the scientist who brought the dinosaurs back from extinction. They figure out that Kane is trying to bring on a new ice age and kill off all of humanity. That might sound like a surprising twist, but oh wait, in the title card from earlier they also show this.

This starwars-esque title crawl happens right off the bat and it is read aloud in a booming announcer voice ala freakazoid. We get this an hour before anyone explains that dinosaurs used to be extinct but some scientist brought them back. Like, we learn the bad guys plan before there is any context for what that plan means.

So, blah blah blah. Whoopi and Teddy save the day in the last second. (I know that seems like me being lazy with the description, but it's literally 1000 times the effort put into the climax of this film.) 

Where do I fucking start with this movie? Oh how about the fact that all of Theodore Rex's lines are spoken in a mumble that seems like he's improving. the dialogue is less intelligible than Melencholia. I don't know if that was a choice, or if it was just poorly recorded sound or what but it's crazy.

Also, the reason I put a question mark by the word android is because it's not very clear. Whoopi keeps talking to people saying that she's uploading the information (using her brain) and in the end she's shot and malfunctions. But there is also a scene where she and teddy talk about how she (and all detectives) have a microchip in their brain. 

OR how about that they don't explain the world until like an hour in? Or the like 3 min cabaret scene that goes nowhere? Or that they offhandedly give dinosaurs Telekinetic powers?

So honestly this movie was a lot of fun. It made no sense and had no desire to make anything more clear for me, and I respect that. 

Holy shit, do I want to meet the pile of cocaine that wrote this movie.

Should you watch: YES. It's 90 min so it's pretty short, and it's bizzar in a way I've never seen before.

Where can I watch? It is free here on youtube!

Thanks for reading. This is my first one. I'm looking to do a review a day. This October I'm celebrating Octerrible, so I'll be watching a new bad movie every day and posting my review here. Thanks to Franky Gonzalez for the recommendation.