Anonymous Rex (2004)

Although I was intrigued by the premise, I was expecting little in terms of quality as most SyFy movies are cheaply made, cheesy and badly written and acted. Having not read the book(s)(and I'd always try to judge a movie on its own terms anyway), I was pleasantly surprised by Anonymous Rex. True, the dialogue quality is still rather cheesy and stilted, and while the premise is interesting with a number of fun scenes there are also some scenes that came across as implausible or came across as loose ends. The ending too felt rather strange and abrupt in tone, and while there have been far worse performances Sam Trammel is a wooden lead. On the other hand, the editing for SyFy is actually quite good, more slick than choppy thankfully, and the effects not only are decent-looking but also not over-used. The dinosaurs are a fun and sometimes menacing presence, the sound effects are not bizarre but suitably eerie in places and the music is rousing in alternative to generic. The characters are thankfully more interesting than the usual annoying one-dimensional stereotypes that plague SyFy's movies, and while nobody is a standout as such(though also no-one is a complete waste either) the acting is still efficiently done on the whole. All in all, definitely could've been more but for me Anonymous Rex is one of the better SyFy originals. 6/10 Bethany Cox

'Anonymous Rex' is a pale, PALE shadow of the cockeyed brilliance of the books. While the setup is rather ludicrous, the books had a lot of fun with the concept. The narration sounded like something out of the back corner of Bruce Campbell's mind, the characters were engaging, and the dialogue was actually funny. Here... They ruined it. Whoever made this movie RUINED IT! There's no humor, no excitement, no LIFE to this movie. It takes itself too seriously. That is a fatal flaw when you're dealing with something as completely insane as this. Terrible acting, script (whose bonehead idea was it to give Ernie a human daughter?), special effects, everything completely and utterly SUCKED. Avoid this movie at all costs.

I really have to disagree with the first line of the movie, as, I wanted to grow up and be a private investigator, and still do.Even though I love sci-fi and detective stories, I'm getting ever so tired of movies that start at the end and then drop back a week to show you how they could have ever gotten to this point. This theme is a bit overdone, somebody think of some new twist on this, please. As is required by the Film Actors Guild, there is indeed a Baldwin in the movie, so F.A.G. will fully support this TV movie. There are a few unexpected turns, but few really original thoughts to the plot, other than the basis of the movie itself.Rumour has it that this will be a series next season, and we need more good scifi, as it's running pretty thin out there. Here's hopin.

Having not read any of the novels, I don't feel that I can supply a fully-informed critique; however I can provide a critique of the piece as a piece of filmed entertainment.I'm usually disappointed by most SciFi fare, but I checked this one out on the basis of the reviews that the novels had gotten.I was less than impressed by the script. For months I had heard what a funny and entertaining piece of work the books were, but that value failed to manifest on the screen. The initial discouragement of 'a modern-day dinosaur-detective, pursuing his career disguised as a human in a rubber costume' failed to be salvaged from the execution of the screenplay. While the 'rubber-suit idea had been updated, the script and the actors' performances didn't seem to be in on the joke - the voice-overs were dire, and the story wasn't funny or humorous, just contrived.In the end, this film was no better than the average broken-genre absurdity that the SciFi Channel has been broadcasting over the past several years: It was just a bland disappointment manufactured by a network that either doesn't understand genre television or has bent so far over to broaden their audience that they've alienated their original constituents with 'family fun' like this feature.