T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous

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There isn't any opening joke for this review. Normally, to get things started, I try to throw in an entertaining and somewhat witty remark about the film at hand. However, in the case of T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous (T-Rex) that would suggest that I hadn't actually lost my sense of humor during the middle of this barely 50 minute long celluloid abomination.

Presented on the big screen at Navy Pier (and when we say big, we mean BIG; according to theater officials, the screen is 6 stories tall and 8 stories wide), T-Rex is the latest in a line of 3-D movies produced by the IMAX corporation. Directed by Brett Leonard, who has specialized in effects-laden films like Virtuosity and The Lawnmower Man, T-Rex is the story of a teenage girl, Ally, played by Liz Stauber, and what seems to be her acid trip back to the cretaceous.

Stauber's father, played by Peter Horton, is a renowned paleontologist-the Indiana Jones of dinosaurs. On a dig, Horton finds several objects that he suspects are dinosaur eggs. Stauber immediately assumes them to be the eggs of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. When Horton and Stauber return to the museum following the conclusion of the dig, Stauber accidentally drops one of the eggs, cracking the egg and releasing some of the prehistoric air that heretofore had been contained within the egg. She inhales the air and suddenly begins to hallucinate that the skeletons and displa.html>spla.html>spla.html>spla.html>splays in the museum are real, and begins interacting with several of the forefathers of paleontology who have, in reality, been dead for decades.

Now I don't know about you, but I found this story idea bad to the point of losing my dinner. Co-writer and executive producer Andrew Gellis explained the plot away in the press material by stating "The opportunity to create a 45 minute story, bringing photo realistic dinosaurs to life... was irresistible." Apparently so irresistible that realism, suspension of disbelief, and a 25 word pitch that seemed flawed when compared to The Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death didn't matter.

Worse than the story though, was Leonard's command of the material. When you watch a 3-D movie, with the illusion of actual depth and dimension, that is shown on a screen six stories tall, the last thing one would want to do is to have a lot of close-ups head shots of the actors. Not only would such a tactic invade the audience's personal space, but no one in their right mind would ever look at someone that closely. Especially someone that had the uncharismatic and unappealing look of Stauber.

I am not a person who judges others on the sole basis of their appearance, but in the case of T-Rex, I find it unavoidable, as never before has my enjoyment of a motion picture been diminished because of the constant in-your-face shots of a most unattractive lead actor. Head shot after head shot of the sharply featured and beady-eyed Stauber was filmed and put onto the immense screen. Her eyes and chin seemed disproportionate when compared to the rest of her face, and, obviously shot out of sequence, it became a source of entertainment for the audience members to watch Stauber's zits move around on her face.

The technology behind the 3-D technology and the realistic viewing capacities of the IMAX film were phenomenal-the four or five minutes the audience was given of Stauber interacting with the dinosaurs were by far the film's most enjoyable, ever if it was, as the people seated behind me suggested, in the hopes that "the damn girl would get eaten"-but one of the worst cinematic plot lines I have ever seen and a most questionable style of direction put T-Rex in a class of it's own. Anything you see, up to and including a re-run of Ricki Lake will be better than this film.