Anonymous Rex dvd movie.|
Anonymous Rex dvd videos, dvd movies reviews |
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List Price: $9.98 Our Price: $9.98 Features • Closed-captioned • Color • DVD-Video • NTSC In Theaters : 19 November, 2004 DVD Release : 29 August, 2006 |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Skip the movie and read the books. |
| The premise: dinosaurs faked their extinction and are living among us in human disguises.
Okay, with that out of the way, the movie is called Anonymous Rex, but the plot comes from Casual Rex, the second novel in the series. Even then it's just the basic idea. It's not based on the book, it only vaguely resembles the idea of a cult of dinosaurs who want to shed their human disguises and come out of hiding by revolting against the human race. This makes the movie easier to judge in its own right because even someone who's read the books won't be too biased. What we have is, well, made for TV. Budget. As described in the books, the CGI required to make these dinosaurs come to life (like stepping into and out of latex human disguises) would be incredibly complicated and expensive. It's barely imaginable when reading the books, think of the difficulty making it believable in a movie! So the filmmakers took the expected shortcut by changing the latex guises to digital holograms. This way they only had to make CGI dino-heads and paste them on top of the actor's bodies. It's very cheap and cowardly. We only get to see Vincent's dino-head for a grand total of 10 seconds spread out over the course of the whole movie and he doesn't even look like a raptor! He's a generic reptile-like-thingy with a stubby snout. Is that supposed to be a dinosaur?! It doesn't help the premise, it undermines it! Furthermore, Ernie's head and claws are both seen once (3 seconds each). Young Vincent is seen only for a few seconds in a flashback. Altogether, there are only three dinosaur heads in the whole movie standing in for the entire sub-population. It's corny. Reminds me of the original Star Trek series: "Yes, we *are* aliens. We've all taken on human form for no apparent reason, but we ARE powerful aliens and in our natural forms we are multi-limbed and have three heads, but for reasons NOT related to show budget whatsoever we have taken on human form and you should revere us anyway." There was a commercial for Gatorade in the mid-90s that showed more raptor than this (and it actually looked like a raptor). This is a movie! Why make it if you're not going to show us anything?! Tone. The movie is very dark and humorless, unlike the books which are light and full of sarcastic humor. As usual the movie keeps everything in the dark so it doesn't look so absurd when seen. It took itself too seriously. It's more like an episode of Law and Order than anything Eric Garcia wrote: emotionless, just-the-facts, and contrived. Time. 90 minutes was not enough time to build a unique world, tell a mind-blowing mystery, and add depth to the characters at the same time. You'd think that if the filmmakers weren't going to show us the dinos they'd at least make the mystery engaging, right? There is barely any mystery. Our private-eyes are faced with a question and then in the next scene they answer it. There is no buildup or suspense. The mystery and the solution to it are spelled out (not presented) before the first hour. Without the dinosaurs it's just a generic detective story. Nothing special about it at all. At the same time the movie tries to show some kind of dilemma for Vincent, that he almost joins the cult, but it's glazed over so quickly that there is nothing to digest. There's no time to develop the characters or give weight to the events, so the actors only needed to use two emotions throughout the whole movie (straight-faced and angry). I don't blame the actors, I blame the script and the TV limits. No time for depth. No time for story. No budget for visuals. No room for humor. Now, speaking as a fan of the books, I notice the following: In the book Ernie does not have a daughter, he is divorced from his wife, and he is not a triceratops. Why change all that here? It didn't add anything consequential to the movie except a damsel in distress, a single father the audience can better identify with, and a species the audience will recognize. Wait...never mind. The book has dinosaurs out of their disguises, walking around, getting into bloody fights, talking to each other as dinosaurs, even having sex as dinosaurs! There are mansions, a private island, huge crowds of dinosaurs. The climax of the book is big. Very big. Absurdly big and tongue-and-cheek hilarious as the crowd of celebrity look-alike cross-dressers storms in and fights the cultists. The movie? It had the budget for three dinosaur heads (20 seconds total), two hands (5 seconds), flickering holographic disguises, two unused rubber suits made to look like the actors, half a dilophosaurus in a darkened room, and Young Vincent (8 seconds). It all builds to the movie's climax: Vincent takes five seconds to decide *not* to open a door. Oh... The suspense... That was it?! That was the end?! That was final confrontation?! Yeah, it's a made-for-TV movie and we're supposed to keep our expectations low, but I had hoped for something better. They did do a few things right. Conveying the sense of smell with visual cues was well-done. Ernie was brilliantly cast. He was just as I pictured him. And the idea that all dinosaurs have this desire to revolt against the human race is an interesting twist (even though the books show the opposite attitude). I'd like to see how this idea pans out...but of course if this becomes a TV series it will have an even lower budget and we won't see *that* either. The movie is pedestrian, cheap, stiff and humorless compared to the story Eric Garcia wrote. All the changes to the story were the result of low budget. Again, why did they bother to make it if they weren't going to show us any dinosaurs? Why couldn't it have been a real movie with an actual budget and with more time to put some depth into the characters so it didn't come across as the first episode of yet another generic TV crime series? That's all this is. "Anonymous Rex" could've been special, but because of budget it got downsized to a "Law and Order" clone. Skip the movie. Read the books. All of them. Hollywood is still limited by budget but books can do anything. |
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