Theodore Rex (1995)

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.

I saw this only today, and I do agree with the other reviews, it really is that bad. So much so, I am seriously considering putting it on my bottom 20. Before I begin criticising this abominable film, I have to give some credit to Whoopi Goldberg for trying so hard to give her character some credibility if not entirely succeeding for understandable reasons.The special effects are just woeful, very rushed and lacking any clarity or sharpness. Theodore Rex as a character looks grotesque and horrible as well, and cinematography and editing-wise the film looks cheap. The story is woefully predictable and misconceived, the dialogue is sloppy with any sense of comedy being flushed down the toilet and the direction is wretched. Also, Theodore Rex is too violent for kids and adults I agree will find it a chore to watch due to its own stupidity.The acting is also dire. Goldberg tries hard, but Armin Muellen-Stahl overdoes it badly in a very clichéd role as a mad scientist and lacks any menace. Overall, a really bad movie that as far as I'm concerned deserves its dubious reputation. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Theodore Rex (T. Rex, getit?) is the story of a dinosaur detective who teams up with a hard-ass cyborg cop (inexplicably played by Whoopi Goldberg) to catch a killer in what the movie hints is the world's fist ever 'dinocide.' This film is not to be confused with Theodore Rex, the 2001 biography of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. The film was clearly meant to be a buddy cop comedy, but sadly the only joke here is the movie itself.Q: What costs $33.5 million dollars and goes direct-to-video? A: Theodore Rex. But all joking aside, this is not the worst film ever made. The special effects, at least those done in the computer, are below average for 1996, but the animatronics are passable at least. The plot drags its feet under a mountain of mildly entertaining filler. The worst scenes take place in a dinosaur dance club. Perhaps the only truly revolting scene in the film involves a ceratopsidae (a three horned type dinosaur) flirting with our cyborg cop, leaving us to contemplate an inter-species relationship between a dinosaur and Whoopi Goldberg. The horror! The rest of the film is a bland but generally unoffensive brand of unfunny humor consisting of two parts slapstick and one part flatulence, but T. Rex is too dull to hold the attention of little tots long enough to bring them to its peak of comedy genius. Do not rent this movie. T. Rex is mildly entertaining, but not worth spending any money on.

From watching only the trailer to Theodore Rex, you would think this is a bad buddy cop comedy with Whoopi Goldberg and a guy in a dinosaur costume. That is true, but this is mostly a futuristic story, which looks a lot like Batman Forever with it's direction style and weird character designs. It was mismarketed, and should have been marketed as a futuristic tale, instead of just a lame cop comedy. Whether or not this movie is mismarketed, it's still a horrible movie.In the future, dinosaurs have been brought back to life through amazing technology, and they talk and walk around like humans. Teddy is a dinosaur detective who is never taken seriously, but after a dinosaur is murdered, he's given the case to work on, but he has to be partners with the toughest cop of them all, Katie Coltrane (Whoopi Goldberg). It's up to this mismatched duo to solve the murder, and it's up to the audience to stay awake long enough to make it through this piece of crud.Teddy starts the picture as a normal acting character, but by the end he is unbearable to listen to. For some reason along with being a detective, he's also a bad comedian and a bad impersonator. He does imitations of famous people and accents, and has some truly awful lines. Whoopi blames him for farting and he says, "It's not my butt trumpet!" Wow! What a puerile, immature line, even for a kid's movie of this caliber. Whoopi is also annoying and rude to everyone. I was hoping Teddy would bite her head off the entire length of the film.This movie never knew what it wanted to be. When the futuristic scenes and action occur, there is no comedy or humor. In any non-action scenes, the characters try to be as funny as they can, which just results in nonstop straight faced boredome. The action scenes don't work as they're too weird and not violent enough, and as stated earlier, the comedy is just a bunch of massacred jokes. Nothing ever works here.Having a dinosaur/human detective duo seems like a pretty original movie, if nothing else. Nope! This movie is a huge rip-off of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Just replace dinosaurs with cartoons, and set it in the future, and it's the exact same plot. A man is killed, a dinosaur is killed. A dinosaur and detective solve the murder, a toon and detective solve the murder. The bad guys in Roger Rabbit are Christopher Lloyd and weasels. The bad guys here are a guy who sounds like Christopher Lloyd and guys who act just like the weasels. The club scene in Roger Rabbit where Jessica Rabbit walks down the stage is imitated with dinosaurs. This is a huge rip-off of a much better movie!Overall, this is a bad movie, not even deserving of it's straight to VHS stature.My rating: 1/2 out of ****. 90 mins. PG for mild violence, language and crude humor.