Theodore Rex (1995)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, Alex watches a movie starring Whoopi Goldberg as a no-nonsense cop who teams up with a talking dinosaur to solve a murder and save the world. It's every bit as bad as it sounds.

god I wish I was making this up

Overview: In the world of "the grid," Whoopi Goldberg is a tough cyborg cop named Katie Coletrain who doesn't play by the rules. When another dinosaur (which are around due to genetic engineering thanks to the bad guy) is killed, desk officer Theodore Rex teams up with Coletrain to solve the case. What follows made me reacquaint myself with my old friend day drinking.

[More after the break.]
So, the movie opens with overdramatic narration and a Flash Gordon-esque scrawl that literally gives away the entire plot of the movie: Elizar Kane, the billionaire geneticist, is going all Noah's Ark on the world and plans to destroy everything except his chosen few animals and people so he can start anew.

telegraphing much?

It takes our two bumbling main characters more than an hour to catch up to this narration and get to the action. In the meantime, they busy themselves with the movie's idea of comedy. Eventually, the dinosaur love interest and the adorable little child that Coletrain looks after to show she's not 100% hardass are rescued and the bad guy loses. Yaaaay.

Notable moments/quotes: In the movie's first five minutes, Theodore has a dream about being killed by an exploding butterfly. The significance of this is never really fully explained beyond a bullshit line saying "eh all dinosaurs are psychically linked or somethin."

For me, at least, it was amusing to see Whoopi get all Matrixed out for this film. She plays the straight man here to Theodore's "wackiness," which to her apparently means never having any inflection or showing any interest in what's going on.

"You thought I was bad on Next Gen? You ain't seen nothin yet, nerds."

The movie has many scenes that are clearly intended to be comedic, but the only "joke" (and I use that term loosely) is that Teddy's massive T-Rex tail will smack into something or someone.

are you ready for teddy?

Katie's original human partner who vanishes after the first ten minutes of film: "You sure your CPUs are ready for this?"

Police Chief, seeing Katie's reluctance at having a dino for a partner: "You're not a specist, are you?"
Detective Female Neo (line is repeated at least four times): "He's a dinosaur!"

The bad guy has an underling literally named Mr. Edge. This amused me.

nooo, try again, picture guy

there we go

Teddy: "Don't you have a guardian angel?"
Katie: "Yeah, me."

Once they're on the case, we have the requisite nightclub scene where the cops need to get some information out of the lowlifes. We're then introduced... in this kids' movie... to two disturbing facts:
1) Some dinosaurs use "softskin" as a racial slur against humans, even though all the dinosaurs are somehow vegetarian
2) At least one dino bar patron has a human fetish. Said fetishist leers at Katie with his dead animatronic eyes and tries to make a pass at her.

Teddy, as clearly armed thugs chase his patrol car: "Ah, some trick-or-treaters out for an early Holloween."

Teddy: "Actually, I don't have a gun. I don't believe in violence."
Katie:  "You don't believe in violence, yet you want to be a police person? You must lead a charmed life."

Cop 1, spotting our heroes: "Beauty and the beast?"
Cop 2: "Yeah, who's who?"
Uproarious laughter greets Cop 2's remark.

Katie, being instantly cured of her racism: "You cannot judge a dino by its scales."

Teddy: "I've got to blend in."
Secretary: "Go to the zoo!"

In the only moment that made me chuckle in the movie, after Teddy's cop car gets wrecked, his replacement car ("the only car that's dino-friendly") is a garbage truck. With garbage still inside.

Detective Exposition: "This is the only place on the grid with live animals."

Teddy manages to get Molly Rex, the victim's widow, up to his apartment. Awkward dino courtship ensues, with Molly clearly wanting the t-bone and Teddy stammering about his toy car collection like a six-year-old. I'm sure it was meant to be endearing. It wasn't.

Rejected Five Nights at Freddy's cast member: "You act like only humans fall in love!"

Forensics cop, warning our heroes about a deadly arms dealer who makes exploding butterflies: "In technokill circles, he's called 'The Toymaker.'"

To get information out of this arms dealer quickly, the duo threaten to have Teddy eat him, have Teddy burp at him... and eventually break him by having Teddy sit on him and fart repeatedly. Stay classy.

gods, I hope not

Once they finally reach the requisite action scene, they clumsily justify them being unable to call for backup by having Katie's cyborg parts malfunction. Because apparently regular phones don't exist or anything.

Cartoonish bad guy: "This time, I control evolution, not God."

Katie, to her partner after she's sidelined by an injury: "Use somethin better than a gun. Brain. Use your brain."

Mr. Edge meets his end by running a Jeep into a clearly paper billboard. This, of course, causes his out-of-control vehicle to explode.

Teddy, serving as the mouthpiece for the writers as they scramble to quote a good movie because they can't write anything compelling: "I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."

My thoughts:

There are certain things in this world that defy explanation and simultaneously beg for one. The unfortunate souls who encounter these things are damned to ponder for all eternity the simple question: "Why?!" I have encountered many such things in my lifetime. Certain JRPG boss themes. Bizarre fanfiction. Carhenge. Anti-drug movies clearly made with the assistance of drugs. These mysteries and more have I been forced to ponder in my days. Now, I can add a newcomer to the list: Theodore Rex.

As best as I can figure out, the filmmakers seemed to want to make two very different kinds of movie: a gritty, sci-fi cop movie, and a goofy kids' movie with dinosaurs. Instead of making these two movies, they just smashed them into one. There are so many moments where the movie careens drunkenly from slapstick comedy with Teddy's tail meant to amuse five year olds and moments like the aforementioned scene where a dinosaur with a human fetish hits on our female lead that I can't come to any other conclusion. Upon further research, this movie was made in Germany, and maybe this kind of filmmaking appeals more to German tastes or it was accepted at the time over there to have this much weird, pseudo-risque stuff in a kid's film. I don't know.

This is a minor side point off of what I just mentioned, but there's a weird undercurrent of anti-dinosaur racism in the film's characters. Katie starts out not wanting to have a dino as a partner, and nobody in the film's world really seems to take dinos too seriously. The (black) police commissioner even balks at having a dinosaur detective on the force. However, we're shown in the movie that they have their own culture and own religion, even; there are intricate rites for a fallen dino at the funeral. They're all empaths to some degree, as Teddy gets to see the last few moments of the murder victim's life before he even learns about the case, and other dinos have the same experience. I'm not sure what message or real-world allegory they were going for, if any, in this movie, and I suppose it's admirable to have a kids' movie say "Hey, you should get along with different folks, kids," but... it really doesn't fit the movie's overall feel at all. Hell, Teddy's permanent promotion to detective at the end is heralded at a move for equality by the rest of the characters, making it the film's last major end note aside from And the Adventure Continues. It's a weird side element that feels about as fitting as ketchup in pho soup.

On a counterpoint to the film's message through the dinos of "Respect those with differences!" is one out-of-place scene where Teddy is getting his undercover gear to wear in the field. One fat, no doubt overpaid secretary has Ted step onto a machine where she zaps various outfits on him before they settle on a fitting one. Each outfit is a themed set, such as a valkyrie outfit (which makes him sing a few bars of Wagner) or a sombrero (which makes him speak like a racist Mexican caricature for a little while). It's just one out of a handful of "funny" scenes that aren't, but in context of their "theme" (cannot air quote hard enough), it seems odd, doesn't it?

or maybe I'm going full Tumblr here

Now, it may seem like I'm spending a lot of time and words on the investigation section of the movie, but the movie does the same thing. In this roughly hour and a half movie, over an hour is spent getting through the "mystery." You know, the one revealed in the opening narration to the fucking movie. This is something of a pet peeve of mine as far as mystery or cop shows go, because if the audience is way ahead of the characters, dramatic irony only carries us so far. Why did Sherlock Holmes stories do so well and become so iconic of the genre, despite being pretty formulaic? Because the audience is not and should not be Holmes. We should be Watson: bright enough and perceptive enough to see clues and hints, but if we have the perspective of someone who has everything put together, things become boring. To me, it's like watching some paste-eating kid you're watching for some asshole friend try to tie his shoelaces while you're waiting by the door, impatient because you're going into alcohol withdrawal and just want to get to the damn restaurant already and have a beer.

example 100% hypothetical

There really isn't much to talk about once the "action" starts. Bad guys have big building, cops crash in, clunky fight scenes to allow for "Teddy" to get some hits in, rescue lady dinosaur, blah blah blah.

However, on the topic of the cops, this future society seems oddly militaristic. They're yawn-and-you-miss-it moments, but Katie refers to herself and other cops as "guns" and calls in to "Gun Command" for instructions.

no, not G.U.N. Command, picture guy. god what do I not pay you for

Although we see Katie get reprimanded for her favored tactics of "go in, guns and sarcasm blazing, and get all the criminals," this small moment makes me wonder otherwise, particularly when the movie points out that all cops in this future are cyborgs of presumably the same level as Katie. In this future, is the answer to crime... any crime... just a hail of bullets or lasers? But hey, cops going all military and over-arming themselves clearly remains in the realm of fiction. We can take comfort in knowing that such dark fantasies will never come to life.

oh god damn it

All said, this movie is that kind of an abomination that I needed to get drunk to make it through. It's the kind of movie where the missile that can destroy the world is stopped with one second remaining. You know the sort (and if you don't, count yourself lucky). This movie tries to do something unique, succeeds, and sucks anyway. If that's not damning, I'm not sure what is.

I give this movie a Nic Cage Motivates a Problem Employee out of five. Facebook and Patreon are still things.