It’s once again time for an Aussie indie production, except
this time we’re revisiting an old friend. Well, ‘friend’ is probably
overreaching considering we’re talking about filmmaker Matt Drummond. That name
may not mean much to most of you, but it’s one that I will not be forgetting
any time soon considering he’s the guy who gave us Dinosaur Island, which is
still one of the more perplexing cinematic releases I’ve covered on here.
Perplexing because its only real positive is how unintentionally hilarious it
is due to its very shoddy production values. I’ll admit that I didn’t instantly
put two and two together when first watching it but, after reading up on the
film and finding out that the same guy was behind both films, it makes a little
too much sense. Time to take another trip
down the long and winding road of ironic entertainment.
The plot: In a small American town, Jake (Jordon Dulieu) has
found himself as the caretaker of a living, breathing dinosaur after an
accident involving some mysterious science goo. As he tries to take care of the
dinosaur while keeping him secret from his mother (Beth Champion), brother
(Harrison Saunders) and the nearby military force lead by Col. Roderick
(Rowland Holmes), he and his friends discover that the dinosaur’s existence may
be connected to a number of strange happenings going on in the town.
The acting here basically explains why I take as much time
out to highlight competent child actors as I do: Because the performances here
are what most audiences associate as being the norm for younger actors. Dulieu
is passable as our lead but that’s about where it stops in terms of being commendable: The other actors who make up his group of friends range from
bland to incredibly abrasive in how wooden they are and the adults are written
in that “elders bad, kids good” mindset and they don’t really go beyond that. I
get that being able to give a good performance involves at least a decent
groundwork to build up from, which pretty much no-one here gets, but when the
majority of actors here are this
painfully stilted and almost robotic in their delivery, I have to call a spade
a spade and say that these aren’t good actors.
However, with that said, Rowland
Holmes was actually rather fun as the big bad Colonel. He is probably the only
one taking the cardboard cut-out of a character and running with it as, because
he isn’t even trying to hide how much of a textbook villain he is, the
sliminess of his character oozes through in the performance to create a rather
engaging presence.
So, given the three-year interim between Dinosaur Island and
this, are the visuals any better this time around? In a way, yes. The effects
work on Magnus, while still rather made-for-TV, still looks perfectly acceptable
and it shows that the effects team have some understanding of light and
textures. Hell, I’ll even admit that Magnus himself is rather cute as we see
him grow up very quickly over the
course of the film. As for the rest of the film, it’s business as usual.
Actually, that might not be entirely accurate because, somehow, the effects
work is actually worse than Dinosaur
Island. Magnus is clearly where all the effort was put in, which is
understandable to a degree, but with how slapdash the rest of the effects work
is, that is hardly an excuse.
But the real horrifying part comes in when the
live-action and CGI cuts are shown together, making for easily some of the most
jarring visuals I’m likely to see all year. It gets legitimately painful after
a while, reaching an apex during a scene in a junkyard where the military,
“alien” drones and dinosaurs are all fighting each other. It is absolutely
hysterical in how nothing on screen even remotely fits with anything it’s in
proximity to.
Not that the glaring problems here are delegated just to the
visuals; the script for this is complete hokum as well. Now, while Dinosaur
Island definitely wasn’t good in terms of writing, it at least had a certain
goal in mind when it came to educating viewers on dinosaurs. The trivia was
never on screen long enough to digest properly, but the intent was there
nonetheless. Here? It’s kind of difficult to have a cohesive story when
literally nothing is explained. You
have a story about dinosaurs that form when mysterious science goo comes into
contact with food products (protein shakes, soda, candy, etc.) that is
apparently a military experiment, but good luck gleaming any of this from the
film itself.
Instead, the film is much more interested in rather banal family
drama involving the lead character’s dead father and the family trying to deal
with their grief. Of course, since this is largely populated with bits and
pieces that audiences have seen in countless other films, and it isn’t exactly
presented here in any appealing way, I doubt any real “effort” was put into
this either. Add to this the stereotyped main group, whose main running gag is
telling intentionally bad jokes to each other, and you have a recipe for ear
poison.
Even though this is a true-blue local production, to the
point where one of the main actors was at my screening (it was Rowland Holmes
and, in the spirit of at least trying to be fair, I told him face-to-face that
he was good in this), you wouldn’t have guessed that from what we see on screen.
For reasons that I can only speculate on, this is a story set in small town USA
with everyone sporting American accents and the American military being the
main threat. Admittedly, the accents from the cast are at least passable and it
not being their native speech might explain how wooden the acting is, but
there’s something kind of unsettling about this production’s very existence.
This honestly feels wasteful since, if you’re going to film in Australia and
not even bother to change out the New South Wales license plates (every time
these showed up, it kept bringing me right out of the action), why not have
them be Australian characters? I can only guess that this was done to appeal to
a more global audience, and possibly as a half-hearted commentary on the US
military in light of… let’s say rather troubling news of late, but all it does
is show a serious disconnect between what they keep telling us about the story
and what we can clearly see about the story.
All in all, we once again have a film released to mainstream
cinemas that is no way up to cinematic standards. I’m not asking for anything
ground-breaking; I just want at least someshowing of competence. And quite frankly, between the mostly-painful acting,
horrible scripting and outright atrocious effects work, there’s not a whole lot
of that here. But, even with all that said, I’ll admit that I still had plenty
of laughs while watching this thing. Much like Dinosaur Island, this may not be
well-made by any stretch but it is rather entertaining with the right mindset.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Enjoyment, no matter how it is
derived, is always relevant. As such, I have nothing but good wishes for Matt
Drummond on his future ventures; I may have enjoyed this ironically but, quite
frankly, it’s still more than I end up getting from a lot of big budget
Hollywood releases.
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