Theodore Rex (1996) and the Decade of Dinosaurs

“I didn’t butt trumpet!” –Theodore Rex

1995 was a big year for film.  Toy Story came out, marking the first feature length computer animated film.  David Fincher and Bryan Singer were finding success with Se7en and The Usual Suspects, respectively.  The Before trilogy began, James Bond was rebooted, and Nicolas Cage was about to win an Oscar.  But there was one thing important to this blog that happened that year.  1995 saw the release of Theodore Rex, the most expensive direct-to-video movie at the time, and the only direct-to-video movie to be nominated for Golden Raspberry Awards.

Theodore Rex starred Whoopi Goldberg as Katie Coltraine, a police officer who was partnered with a dinosaur named Theodore Rex (the voice of George Newbern) to solve a dinosaur homicide in the future.  They discover an evil plot created by Elizar Kane (Armin Mueller-Stahl), the man who brought extinct creatures back from the dead.  There was also a love story brewing between Theodore and Molly Rex (Carol Kane).

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a dinosaur craze in the media.  Theodore Rex was on the tail end of the dinosaur craze that was sweeping the big and small screens.  To say where the movie went wrong, it would be best that I start at the beginning of the craze and try to work my way up to its direct-to-video release in 1995.  This won’t be everything that was released during that time period, but this is going to be a fair list, hitting many of the highlights of the decade of dinosaurs.  Let’s start with the earliest big one that comes to mind.

The Land Before Time

The year is 1988.  Don Bluth had left the money making machine that was Disney because he wanted to do his own thing.  He branched out with a movie called The Secret of NIMH, and followed that with An American Tail.  His third feature film would be a dark adventure with dinosaurs.  That was The Land Before Time.

There were some similarities to Disney movies, even though Bluth was no longer associated with the studio.  The main character of Littlefoot experienced a traumatic incident not unlike what happened to Bambi’s mom.  The difference was that Littlefoot was present for the event.  Yet, having those emotional beats wasn’t enough.  The Land Before Time discussed racism.  It was deeper than most children were used to.  For many, that would go over their heads.  They were too focused on how great it was that dinosaurs were travelling together.  It helped reignite children’s love for dinosaurs and the prehistoric.  Though I’m sure some children would have loved dinosaurs anyway, the next few years would mark them being overwhelmed by the creatures.

Jurassic Park – The Novel

Two years after the release of The Land Before Time, Michael Crichton published a novel that tackled the subject of dinosaurs.  Jurassic Park was about a group of intellectuals who visited a soon-to-be-opened amusement park that brought dinosaurs back to life.  As they observed the cloned creatures, danger struck.  Some of the dinosaurs escaped their pens and caused damage, destruction, and death.  It was a story about whether or not the human race should act as God, and how chaos was the true force over Earth.

The book became a best-seller and is the work that Michael Crichton is most known for.  Though books like Congo, Timeline, The Andromeda Strain, and Sphere would have a lasting legacy, partially due to their film adaptations, it would be Jurassic Park (also with a movie) which would be seen as his masterpiece.  People ate it up.  It brought dinosaurs back to an adult audience.  Now both adults and children had reason to once again be interested in dinosaurs.  It would only be a matter of time before the adult and child audiences came together.

Dinosaurs

A year after Jurassic Park was published, a more family friendly version of dinosaurs were put onto television by ABC.  The sitcom Dinosaurs was about a family of dinosaurs living their family life in 60,000,003 BC.  The dinosaurs were puppets made by The Henson Company.  It was a ground-breaking show that doesn’t seem to be talked about enough.

I never watched the show, so there’s not much that I can say about it.  From the slight amount of research I’m doing, it covered some important topics.  Some episodes involved civil rights, LGBT issues, censorship, pressure put on women to look a certain way, and other serious topics.  It even ended with the destruction of the world, which is the one thing I know about the show.  In terms of shows with crazy finales, this one was near the top.  It only lasted four seasons, but Dinosaurs left a lasting impact upon the television world, being one of the strangest and most unique things to ever air.

Jurassic Park – The Movie

Soon after Jurassic Park was published, Steven Spielberg directed a film adaptation.  He made a few changes to make it family friendly, but the basic story was the same.  The movie, released in 1993, blended the wonder of seeing dinosaurs alive after so many years of extinction with the horror of these creatures being able to easily kill the people who brought them back.  It was Spielberg’s version of a horror movie, fitting right alongside Jaws and Poltergeist in his filmography.

The movie was a huge success, becoming one of the highest grossing movies of all time at that point.  It was such a success that we are still, today, seeing the aftermath.  The film franchise was resurrected in 2015 with Jurassic World.  It was a movie made for children and adults alike, though it had the ability to frighten either demographic.  Jurassic Park brought dinosaurs back to life, much like the characters within it, and gave people of all ages the nostalgic feeling they wanted.  Though dinosaurs had been present in entertainment for years, this was the moment when they found popularity.  People wanted more dinosaurs.  Michael Crichton wrote a sequel.  Steven Spielberg directed a sequel.  People loved dinosaurs.

Friends

You’re probably trying to figure out why I would include a sitcom about a group of friends doing friend stuff as one of the reasons that dinosaurs were such a big thing in the early 1990s.  Ross, one of the six main characters, was a palaeontologist.  He studied dinosaurs and wasn’t afraid to share his love from time to time.  Of course, there were other elements to his work.  Dinosaurs just happened to be a large part of what made Ross who he was.

Friends might not have been big for dinosaur appreciation in the media in the way that Jurassic Park or Dinosaurs were.  It didn’t show dinosaurs.  But the show, which began in 1994, normalized people who loved dinosaurs.  Though Ross was made fun of for his love, the show still managed to show that some people love dinosaurs.  Dinosaurs weren’t an outlandish thing to like.  Sure, it was for geeks, but that was okay.  Ross was never ashamed of his love for prehistoric creatures.  It showed that people didn’t need to be ashamed of their love for dinosaurs.  You might call this a stretch, but I think Friends was one of the big points of dinosaurs in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure

In 1994, six years after the release of its predecessor, the second Land Before Time movie was released.  This was a direct-to-video sequel to the 1988 film directed by Don Bluth.  The sequel lost the main creative team behind the original.  Bluth was gone.  Spielberg, Lucas, and Kennedy were also gone.  Instead, there was a new team that made the franchise more child friendly.  The story was still dark.  There were dinosaurs trying to steal eggs, and the sharpteeth were out to eat the young ones.  But there were now songs.  There were musical numbers to get the children more interested.

The release of this sequel, as well as the many that followed, kept dinosaurs in the mind of children.  The thing is, it was a turning point for adults.  With this franchise blossoming, dinosaurs had once again become a fantasy for kids.  The movies were geared towards kids.  Without a new Jurassic Park movie until 1997, dinosaurs were put at the back of the mind for adults.  One more movie would put the nail in the coffin for dinosaurs outside of the Jurassic Park franchise.

Theodore Rex

After the success of Jurassic Park and the show Dinosaurs, someone, somewhere decided that it would be a good idea to make a buddy cop movie with a dinosaur and Whoopi Goldberg.  They probably just wanted to cash in on a lot of popular aspects of entertainment, like Xanadu attempted in the 1980s.  Dinosaurs were hot off of the Jurassic Park success.  Whoopi Goldberg was coming off of Ghost and the Sister Act movies.  Buddy cop movies had been successful for a decade, with the Lethal Weapon movies still coming out.

What didn’t work was that the movie didn’t know its audience.  The story was adult.  It was a buddy cop detective story about a dinosaur homicide.  That was some serious stuff.  There were allusions to dinosaur sex.  But then there was a child character for children to be interested in, and fart jokes because… Fart jokes.  There were adult subjects and child humour.  This odd mixture that made the movie for both everybody and nobody was probably what sent the movie direct-to-video, and may be the biggest reason that dinosaurs haven’t been as big outside of the Jurassic Park franchise since.

Dinosaurs had a large impact on entertainment in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Sure, there are still the odd movies with dinosaurs.  But outside of the two flagship franchises, Jurassic Park and The Land Before Time, there’s not a whole lot of dinosaur stuff going on.  We’ve mostly shied away from that.

Though 1995 was a big year for important movies and important filmmakers, Theodore Rex has gone mostly under the radar.  It is as important as some of the others, being one of the notable hallmarks in the downfall of dinosaurs in mainstream movies.  It made history at the Golden Raspberry Awards, but was forgotten because of movies like Battlefield Earth, Gigli, and Jack and Jill coming in and cleaning up.  It was a major motion picture reduced to a direct-to-video release.  All of these details should be remembered.  Yet Theodore Rex doesn’t have that legacy.  It is known as a bad movie.  It is not known for its place within the pantheon of bad movies.  It should be.

Here are the notes for this post:

• Theodore Rex was suggested by my friend @jaimeburchardt, who has also suggested the movies House of the Dead, Monster Brawl, Simon Sez, Alone in the Dark, and Double Team.
• Jack and Jill and Xanadu were mentioned in this post.
• Jack Tate was in Theodore Rex.  He was also in Monster in the Closet and Warriors of Virtue.
• Theodore Rex was the third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Rodger Bumpass who was in Santa, Jr. and Bio-Dome. 
• Noon Orsatti made his return to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Theodore Rex after being featured in Ed.
• Whoopi Goldberg was in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 as well as Theodore Rex.
• Denise Dowse and Phil Proctor were both featured in Bio-Dome and Theodore Rex.
• If you recognized Richard Roundtree in Theodore Rex, that may be because he was in Steel.
• James Murray is now a two-timer in the Sunday “Bad” Movies having appeared in both Theodore Rex and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.
• The voice of Molly Rex was Carol Kane, who was also featured in Ishtar.
• Theodore Rex saw Susie Coehlo coming back to the Sunday “Bad” Movies after an appearance in Perfect.
• Remember the movie Budz House?  It had an actor named Peter Kwong, who was also in Theodore Rex.
• Finally, Bill Farmer was in both Theodore Rex and Son of the Mask.
• Have you seen Theodore Rex?  I know I missed and skipped some dinosaur related stuff.  Do you want to discuss it?  Anything you want to talk about can be put in the comments section below.
• The comments are also a good place to leave suggestions of movies that I should watch for future Sunday “Bad” Movies weeks.  If you have a movie for me to watch, let me know.  I’m always open to suggestions.  Suggest in the comments or my Twitter timeline.
• Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I share clips of them on my snapchat.  You can add me with the username jurassicgriffin.
• Next week is going to get a little weird.  The movie coming up is Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  I’ve seen it once before and it’s insane.  I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to write about it, but you’ll find out next week what I have in store for you.  See you then.