With Jurassic World: Dominion hitting digital video this week after another big box office haul for the franchise, Awfully Good Movies is excavating a dinosaur movie far sillier than anything Colin Trevorrow could cook up, with Whoopi Goldberg and her prehistoric partner Theodore Rex!
In 1992, fresh off being the second Black woman to win an Oscar, Whoopi somehow thought agreeing to a movie where she’s a half-cyborg cop in a dystopian future teaming up with a genetically revived dinosaur who can walk and talk amongst humans to stop a billionaire’s plans for a second ice age was all on the up and up. But upon trying to change her mind, the film’s producer slapped Whoopi with a $20 million lawsuit, and she instead just agreed to do the movie for a $2 million increase in pay.
However, none of that money would be seen by the movie itself, because poor test screenings convinced New Line Cinema to dump this “one big pile of shit” into the direct to video toilet…and understandably so, because Theodore Rex somehow has more unanswered questions than the entire Jurassic World trilogy. Why is Whoopi wearing a Catwoman outfit to make her look even more uncomfortable than she already is? Why does her dino partner love to eat cookies and have psychic powers? Who convinced Armin Mueller-Stahl and Richard Roundtree to drag their reputations through the mud alongside this barely functional dino puppet?
And above all else: Who thought this brain-hurting mashup of ABC’s Dinosaurs, Blade Runner and 48 HRS that’s allegedly a “family movie” was ever gonna be a hit? Let’s just hope that the phrase “life finds a way” never applies to a Theodore Rex 2.