“We’re Back: A Dinosaur’s Story” is bit of an understatement. The title hardly does this situation justice. What I mean is, that is a very cavalier thing to say when you have been transported millions year into the future and given the power of speech and critical thinking. But it’s a kids movie, I guess. Most of the people who have seen this movie couldn’t even spell “cavalier”... or “movie”.... or “solicitation.” I used to watch this movie when I still would forget what a bathroom was and would just piss myself playing with my gargoyles and power rangers, and it suited me just fine then. And yes, this movie, I’m sure, is an absolute thrill to anyone who still regularly fails to internalize the concept of a bathroom. For those of us who can use the porcelain pedestal, it is not going to titillate us the way it might our younger counterparts.
All of this is a really roundabout way of saying that it is a kids movie and that classy toilet jokes are not only possible, but off the heezy.
So I guess I should catch you guys up on what exactly is happening in this movie. Our story begins in a tree, as these things often do. A family of birds is trying to devour an anthropomorphized worm (which is kind of horrific if taken at face value. I mean, the thing is crawling away for it’s life, teeth chattering in terror. It’s pretty fucking macabre.) and the youngest is getting beat up by his siblings. So he runs away. Or tries to. But instead, he is almost killed by a golfball being hit by a dinosaur named Rex who precedes to give him a valuable life lesson.
“If you’re a dinosaur, why are playing golf?”
A moment of clarity in a fog of bewildering insanity.
Our story continues by going back to beginning. As in, I’m assuming, the late Jurassic era. I suppose it could have been early Cretaceous, because Pterodactyls and Tyrannosaurus Rex flourished during the late Jurassic, early Cretaceous eras. Stegosaurus was around for mostly the Jurassic era, but Parasaurolophus didn’t show up until the late cretaceous. So I’m gonna say mid-Cretaceous. It’s a bit of a stretch to think Parasuarolophus was around that early or Stegosaurus that late, but we’re dealing in fantasy here. I’ll let it pass...
Don’t you give me that look.
Anyway, in short, Walter Cronkite (seriously) goes back in time to pick up these dinosaurs and feeds them “brain gain” cereal, which makes them smart (cereal propaganda? You tell.... But no, it’s not.) Then, he show them this nifty little invention that shows everybody's wishes come out in bubble form! As in, they appear in bubbles and float around the room and recite their wishes. Never mind that everybody in the world apparently speaks fluent english and talks like a five-year-old new yorker, but a staggering amount of them wished they could see dinosaurs. Seems like a waste of a wish to me, but it gives us a plot, so who’s complaining?
Me. I am complaining.
Don’t you give me that look.
ANYWAY, they go to New York circa 1992 and live it up. They even meet a little street rat bitch named Louie who wants to join the circus. Long story short, they all become friends and Rex learns golf. I guess. I don’t know, they dance during the Macy’s Day Parade and some girl wants a thanksgiving hat and that little red haired girl drops it from her roof and it lands on her head.
I don’t even know what a thanksgiving hat is. That, apparently.
I live in New York City and have been to many of the places specified in the film. I am familiar with the New York mentality and when Walter Cronkite says “New York isn’t ready for you guys” I have to agree. It was hard enough building a mosque, I don’t think bringing prehistoric talking lizards into midtown would go over very well. They’d probably say something like “Of course, you know, they have the right to be here. But being so close to The Museum of Natural History is really insensitive” or “What about the families whose loved ones got eaten by gila monsters? Don’t their voices count?” or “Obama is a fascist!” Then they’d hold a rally and somehow end up chanting “No new taxes! No new taxes!”
Ultimately though, they probably wouldn’t notice. I once saw a guy get hit by a car and a woman walking past me said to a friend “I wish we always had this kind of weatha” (that’s New York for weather). I bet that woman has a witnessed a murder and doesn’t even know it. The point being, New Yorkers are remarkably unobservant. It took them a good ten minutes to realize that the “floats” in the parade were actually dinosaurs. Watching their dawning realization was fun though. Kinda like when you’ve been humming “Killer Queen” really loudly in the bathroom stall and suddenly realize there’s a guy sitting in the next stall over and you walk out of the stall at the same time and he gives you a look like “Dude, I love that song, please don’t hum it while I’m shitting” and you have to avoid eye contact and continue humming because if you stop he’s going to think you didn’t know he was there, which you obviously didn’t, but like hell you’re going to admit it and then leave the bathroom at the same time and walk two steps ahead of him until you both go back to class and he sits right behind you and you have to spend the rest of the class thinking “he’s probably thinking how he’s going to word his story when he inevitably tells all his friends about the ginger who was humming Queen while he was trying to shit.” It’s kind of like that.
DON’T YOU GIVE ME THAT LOOK.
While this movie does have it’s drawbacks (bizarre breaking of the fourth wall, an unsettling music number, unexplained supernaturalism, subliminal drug references) I have to admit, they really pulled out the stops as far as casting went. They got John Goodman, Jay Leno, Julia Child, Martin Short, Walter Cronkite and Larry King to be in a movie about talking dinosaurs. Not since Christopher Walken in “Balls of Fury” have we seen that.
“But, wait! Who wrote this marvelous movie!?” If you ask, dear readers, I must divulge. You might be familiar with his work. He wrote another screenplay which was also about the dichotomy of conviction and uncertainty and the sexual mores and limitations placed upon religious leaders as well as a meditation on the then-topical issues of sexual abuse surrounding the Catholic church. His name is John Patrick Shanley. He wrote this:
Did I say that this movie was about the dichotomy of conviction and uncertainty and the sexual mores and limitations placed upon religious leaders as well as a meditation on the then-topical issues of sexual abuse surrounding the Catholic church? I meant talking dinosaurs.
In Mr. Shanley’s impeccably written script, the two children, Cecelia and Louie end up signing a contract in blood by Walter Cronkite’s evil brother, Professor Screweye (which is exactly what it sounds like. No, not oracular penetration. He has a screw for an eye. Jeez...). However, this was lost on me for a good part of the movie, as I was certain that Professor Screweye was insisting the children sign his cunt rack.
In Mr. Shanley’s impeccably written script, the two children, Cecelia and Louie end up signing a contract in blood by Walter Cronkite’s evil brother, Professor Screweye (which is exactly what it sounds like. No, not oracular penetration. He has a screw for an eye. Jeez...). However, this was lost on me for a good part of the movie, as I was certain that Professor Screweye was insisting the children sign his cunt rack.
“SIGN MY CUNT RACK!! SIGN IT!!”
And they did, eventually. Somehow, it made them turn into monkeys. Granted, that’s not too far flung from what Louie actually is. His speech pattern is such that by the end of the movie, I gave up trying to understand what he was saying. He also had innumerable moments when a little beauty passes through his lips that would have been caught in the flimsiest of internal filters like “What about your parents? Did they beat you?” I had to pause and rewind after I heard that, just to make sure that a young boy was, indeed, cavalierly asking a ten-year-old girl he had met several seconds earlier if she was being abused by her parents. Or “What are you...sappy?” Good one, tiger.
While this was amusing, what was even more amusing was seeing Julia Child putter around Manhattan on a scooter.
“I heard a rumor that I’m still relevant! Do you think it’s true?!”
But what topped the cake was seeing Jay Leno play his ultimate typecast: an annoying bug of ambiguous importance.
Shit, I’m with CoCo.
Fair warning, the last fifteen minutes of this movie is basically Dumbo on meth. Which has something to do with the dinosaurs taking green glowing pills.
Irradiated baby aspirin? (Nods wisely)
Ultimately, this movie is nothing if not eclectic. We got a lil’ bit of science fiction, a lil’ fantasy, a lil’ romance, a lil’ bit of musical, a lil’ wayne, a lil’ horror, a lil’ comedy. It’s got everything. But I have a beef with this movie. Specifically, the horror aspect. Nine-year-old me has a score to settle. Because nine-year-old me is horribly confused and terrified of crows. Crows, as is the case with many stories, are harbingers of doom and despair. They appear right before bad shit happens and ultimately bring about what I can only assume is the demise of Professor Screweye. In the final scene, he cries desperately to his winged comrades as they engulf his body and fly away, literally leaving nothing but his screwy eye behind.
WHAT THE FUCK, JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY.
This is NOT okay with me. This has been purely based in science fiction until this moment. Every bizarre and impossible thing that happens is attempted to be explained by science. Now, you got this googly-moogly bullshit and people are disappearing by way of crows! Nine-year-old me is NOT amused. Nine-year-old me is TERRIFIED. Also, I realize that I mentioned early that I watched this movie before I was potty trained. I am now also claiming to have watched it when I was nine...
Judge all you want, haters. I weren’t no slave of the porcelain pedestal....
...
Don’t you give me that look....
2.4/5
You are the weakest link joke:
