As with most films from The Asylum, the plot pays legally distinct homage to (ie: rips off) more iconic, financially successful films; in this case E.T. and Jurassic Park. I'm not exactly sure why the writer chose films that are a good couple of decades old to market this schlock to oblivious kids and well-meaning grandparents alike, but I've got a theory. I feel like they were trying to muscle in on some of that sweet, sweet Jurassic World money, but only had a community college campus and a single gross, misshapen dinosaur puppet to work with. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
What could loosely be called the plot follows a boy named Tommy (Gabriel Bennett), a child prodigy and dinosaur fanatic. His hobbies include dabbing goo on ostrich eggs and mumbling out his lines like a pint-sized Tommy Wiseau. Seriously, there's so many botched line reads in this movie that I can only assume the words "take two" were never uttered on set. As he explains though his prolonged techno-babble monologue, Tommy has figured out a way to insert dinosaur DNA into an ostrich egg. Where this kid got dinosaur DNA (or an ostrich egg, for that matter) is left up to the imagination. We get to watch people wordlessly unload ferns from the back of a truck for about two uninterrupted minutes, but learning how a young boy acquired the blood of an extinct reptile just isn't interesting enough to warrant any screentime.
After placing the egg in his dino-making machine (represented by a laptop sat next to a plastic marble maze, because the filmmakers needed a fun visual, but not one that would break the bank), Tommy is shocked (as are we all) to discover that his experiment actually worked. A twelve year old boy has successfully tampered in God's domain and the result is... a dinosaur. It has a proper Latin name, but damned if I can be bothered to remember it. The newly-hatched abomination then laps up a beaker full of growth hormone and quadruples in size, changing from a CGI representation of what would happen if your budgerigar melted in the microwave to an offputting analog puppet. The puppet has no torso or legs, because that would be too expensive. It also isn't allowed to appear anywhere but "mostly offscreen", because properly framing your special effect is just too much work.
I need to take a minute to explain just how much I hated this creature (given the oh-so-original moniker of "Spike" by its master). It's clear that the filmmakers didn't have a whole lot to work with, but did they have to make the cutesy mascot of this film look so unsettling? Even on the box art (which is an entire discussion on its own), it looks like a sassy, irradiated chicken embryo. The cast does their best to emote and interact with this hideous little mistake, but its gaping, lopsided jaw and heavily-lidded, glassy eyes give off the impression that there's nothing going on inside its head. Nothing aside from some poor puppeteer's forearm, that is; the neck is so turgid and inarticulated, it's never not obvious that there's a grown man (or woman) just out of frame, crouched on their hands and knees operating this thing while the voice actor mewls and moans like a deaf cat. I haven't seen such an off-putting E.T. clone since Mac & Me, and at least that has the scene with the wheelchair kid and the cliff.
I also want to talk about the framing in this movie. Everything is shot like it's about to turn into weird, niche porn at any second (though I suppose that's not too surprising, given The Asylum's credentials). There's tons of awkward, empty wide shots and pointless, claustrophobic close-ups, not to mention those distracting half-cuts used to trim the runtime down. I could forgive a lack of budget and poor special effects. I can even overlook bad child actors. But the way this movie is shot inspires a distinct lack of technical ability to top it all off. That combined with the borderline plagiarized plot makes this nigh-indefensible. It's such an obvious cash-grab meant to sucker in people who don't know any better at the checkout line or the bargain bin. And do you know what the worst thing about this movie is? It's boring. It's not even "so bad it's good", it's just dull and uneventful. The kid makes a dinosaur for some kind of competition and doesn't tell anyone (despite this being the scientific find of the century). Then nothing happens until the dinosaur is captured by a scummy businessman. There's an extended chase sequence through a college library that's exactly as exciting as it sounds. The kid rescues the dinosaur, it dies, then it gets better. Roll credits. There's so little value here, I can't even recommend this one ironically. It's just bad.
Jurassic School is the worst kind of movie. In that it's soulless, and not even in a fun kind of way. There are bad movies, awful movies, that have more value as this, both as a piece of art and a piece of entertainment. Movies like The Room and Birdemic and Samurai Cop are worth intrinsically more than stuff like this; they've got more charm, more effort, and more entertainment value. "You're tearing me apart, Lisa" will echo in the halls of eternity; what of Jurassic School? What was the point, the inspiration, the goal? I guarantee not a single actor here (aside from maybe some of the kids) wanted to be involved in this, and it shows. I try to live my life by the idea that there are no truly bad experiences; you either have a good time, or a good story. Like the death of a loved one, Jurassic School is one of those tragic exceptions to that mindset. This is one of the things I'll regret when I'm on my deathbed, willing to pay any price for 80 more measly minutes on this mortal plain. I didn't like it.
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