Sadly i learned of this midway through doing last year’s batch of reviews for 12 Days Of Dino Dicember, so i wasn’t able to cover it back then, but we’re fixing that right now.
The idea is both cute and obvious as hell: a dinosaur film without the dinosaur.
More correctly, the dinosaur is there, it’s a velociraptor, but due to “science” it was made super smart AND invisible, escaping from the lab and going on a rampage, leaving it up to a disgraced paleonthologist (reduced to mascot costume shenanigans at a dino themed amusement park) to save the day from the invisible menace.
I don’t need to, but i will point out that this so obviously feels like them stumbling into a somewhat genius solution when they couldn’t afford the dinosaur in their dinosaur film.
The film knows everyone would have sussed that out immediatly, so it plays as a horror-black comedy that’s basically a spoof of all things Spielberg… well, mostly a flood of references mushed in together, with protagonist being Dr. Grant Walker, an appropriately named fusion of Indiana Jones with Dr. Grant and i suppose Chuck Norris’ character from Walker Texas Ranger, maybe?) as he teams up with an hapless security guard in trying to stop the invisible dinosaur, while everyone obviously doesn’t believe his story until it’s too late, Jaws style.
Problem is, it should be telling when the smartest thing is the “invisible action figure” promotion video/ad, not part of the movie itself, that is genius, and an indication that you should have stopped there without making the movie, maybe? Okay, i’m being mean, but it’s just frustrating as the effort is there, and i would say it feels misguided, even though it’s them clearly doing what they want.
And apparently what they want is cram more shit jokes than an old school AVGN episode, i don’t mind too much… or i wouldn’t if the humour wasn’t so fixated on being this juvenile, and THIS fixated on poop jokes. I would say take a drink anytime someones says “shit” or “butthole”… yes, actually do, because you’ll go into alcoholic coma and maybe then you’d be in the right state of mind to find the torrent of scatological sayings (jokes at times it’s an overstatement) funny.
I’m not above some crude humour, but it stings because the concept could have been sustained and used for better jokes, because you can feel there was something to it that could have made this really funny, that it could have existed a funnier script with this pathetic ass characters… when and IF they can go through a conversation without shit being mentioned.
I do enjoy how it goes the extra mile to basically antagonize every kind of Spielberg movie child possible by treating them like shit in for the hell of it, i will admit, and it does fit with the overall Spielberg tribute-spoof theme,which is definitely not subtle, the town is called “Spilberg”, and the soundtrack is perfect at evoking and spoofing at the same time the tone of his classic films.
and i do like stuff like the velociraptor wandering into the park and learning (yes, it can read/listen) that his kind went extinct so very long ago, so it’s not a complete bore, but it just feels there’s potential for a better (still crude & rude, but better) comedy and a cast that works, committed to these very, very awkward yet somewhat likeable characters, but it feels channelled into comedy’s lowest hanging fruit as a failsafe, almost like they didn’t know what other direction to go with it.
Even so, it’s not even them trying to make things uber gross or offensive like a Troma film of yore, it’s somewhere stuck in between that and the styling of a modern film paying homage to genre films of the past, but one also lazy that outrights says what its referencing when its referencing and not above having an annoying, quick tempered litigious white suburbanite woman an call her “Karen”.
One doesn’t expect a movie like this that is a full on parody-tribute to b-movies and Spielberg films to be classy in its comedy, i expect a lot of splatter, dumb deaths, and lots of gore, and i will say it does deliver in that regard, especially for gore in the latter part of film, but it just makes one wonder if a Jim Jarmush style direction would have helped, heck, one might say it should have gone fully the absurdist route, try to make something like Xavier Renegade Angel, for example.
I will say that this offer some unique sights, like i never saw a raptor’s eat a cat lady and then vomit in a hairball katamari made of what he didn’t digest of the cat lady and the cats, or a crazy chicken KFC Colonel woman in a chicken suit (something straight out of stuff like Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties) eaten by a non-existent special effect creature.
Ironically the special effects are fairly decent for a low budget film like these, and are unsurprisingly most done practical, but are definitely not enough to make me recommend The Invisible Raptor, which isn’t even subpar or bad, it’s just middling and kinda disappointing, as there’s energy, an oddball, gimmicky but almost genious – especially since it saves on creature effects – core idea of an invisible dinosaur on the loose, some oddly likeable loser characters, oddly decent-to-good acting and a love for the genre, but also a tendency to aim for the cheapest sort of comedy possible, to laze out when it could actually put effort and actually be inventive, go batshit insane. Which it doesn’t, and it’s frustrating, it is.
It doesn’t help its cause the honestly excessive runtime of just below 2 hours, for something that should have been a 30-45 minutes short film or sketch at best.
I still think there’s something to like about it (i don’t hate it, for once), a certain lunatic charm and some laughs to be had, despite everything, so fans of genre cinema, dinosaur flicks and especially Spielberg films of old might wanna check it out, but keep your expectations in check (which i something i didn’t expect having to say).
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