Time to close off this year’s 12 Days Of Dino Dicember with a family/children dinosaur movie, one ailing from mainland China and also fairly recent, as in released originally in 2022 as “Wo shi ba wang long”(which i assume translates to “The Tyrannosaurus Rex”, as can be seen in its original Chinese theathrical poster) but localized/released online with the “I Am T-Rex” title.
It’s also a CG animated film, because we already had plenty of no budget puppet dinosaurs, some high quality (and some low ass quality) dinosaur stop motion animation, caveman boning of the implied kind, cannibal movies sold as dinosaur flicks, pseudodocumentaries, dinosaur comedies with yellowface or comedy bits that aged like the reptiles themselves, so for the sake of variety, let’s move away from all that shizzle.
I say that, but honestly even by glancing at the poster and trailer, i was struck by some familiar vibes, and then i remembered of the “Dino King/Speckles The Tarbosaurus” films, especially the second one, Dino King: Journey To Fire Mountain, which isn’t random, as that movie also decided to rip-off the Lion King, but this sets off a cascade of mimicry/ripping off that i didn’t quite foresee, because its not only the similar plots stealing from the same source (itself a rip-off of Kimba, you might argue) and mostly swapping the lions for dinosaurs, it’s that this movie also rip-offs the second Dino King to an embarassing degree, lifting entire scenes, camera angles and composition, in a way that honestly i’m not entirely sure was intentional or just a byproduct of being generic AND ripping off The Lion King, either directly or indirectly by emulating the Dino King films.
Even speculating it’s not actively ripping off the Korean Dino King film series (some scenes are so obviously copied to a tee it’s not even a debate, but whatever), it’s a photocopy of a photocopy, not too surprising given where it’s from (i’m sorry but most of these Chinese films are just as shameless as many Hollywood films are, especially when talking about genre movie like giant monster disaster flick or killer sharks movies, i can say that), but in this case we got a motherlode of hackery and “inspiration” that’s hard to gloss over. Almost impressive, even.
That said, i feel it’s not even important to discuss the basic plot, because you know already what it is: a power hungry big douche-o-saur from outside the valley launches a surprise attack on the “dino monarch”, kills him, only for a young T-Rex to escape, grow up and train, to eventually return and challenge the usurper once he’s the biggest and bravest dinosaur in the land/valley.
So, yeah, i could have simply left a blank paragraph and in one guess you would already know the basic plot for I Am T-Rex, or how the general dialogue for that matter, i didn’t exaggerate that its pretty much yet again Lion King but with dinosaurs.
Originality and its ghost missing aside, the movie does look quite good, to be honest it does look pretty dang good, the CG is detailed and production values are definitely worthy of it being a theathrical release in its homeland (apparently also in 3D, going by the original Chinese poster), it looks pretty and it’s pretty colourful, undeniably, not so much in terms in stylization, as in, technically is impressive but the CG still goes for a somewhat “realistic” rendering when we still have talking animals acting like people, the usual cartoony stuff, but also landscapes opting for that pseudo-realism.
It looks better than having expressionless CG animals that cost milions to move but purposefully can’t emote like people (which they aren’t) overlaid on live action locations, i’ll say that much.
Honestly i don’t have much to say about this one, it’s clearly a family/kids film through and through (see the lack of any pronounced gore or blood even when it would call for it), it’s alright, it’s fine, middle of the road in pretty much every way, but not offensive or awful, just generic as hell and creatively bankrupt, but for the intended audience of young kids, it’s just ok, animation is good (not great but fairly good) and it’s just 80 minutes long, so it does the job it sets out to, if nothing else.
Wise Cafe (International) 