Plot: Chris (Kyler Charles Beck) visits an antiques shop and finds himself surrounded by interesting curios, but one item catches his eye more than the others. He is quite taken with what appears to be a large, decorative egg and the eccentric owner (Ben Hell) is more than willing to turn over the egg to Chris. As it turns out, the egg was no mere decoration and when it starts to hatch, Chris is stunned to discover there was a dinosaur inside. Now he has a small, mischievous dinosaur on his hands, known as Albert, so he tries to keep his existence a secret. After all, if anyone learns about Albert, they could take the dinosaur away and Chris would be crushed. When Albert gets loose and causes chaos around town however, it draws the attention of a nefarious scientist, who plans to capture the dinosaur. Can Chris keep Albert safe or will his new friend be taken to the lab for whatever experiments await?
Entertainment Value: I will give almost any movie with a dinosaur a look and since this one kind of reminded me of the old Moonbeam produced family friendly films from Full Moon, I was optimistic. The Adventures of Jurassic Pet winds up as a mediocre, mostly forgettable movie, but I’d think for those who just want a decent film to keep their young viewers busy, you could do a lot worse. The narrative is well worn and the movie does little to spruce it up, but I think even the lamest script is a little better if there’s some kind of dinosaur involved, right? I hoped this would be a silly, over the top kind of comedy and it is at times, but the pace is slow and the movie seems to want to be overly serious too often. I think more wackiness or even some slapstick humor would have helped, as the movie flounders in many scenes and while the dinosaur and the mad doctor can be fun, that’s about it. I still wouldn’t rank this with the worst family aimed movies I’ve seen, but it doesn’t earn much of a recommendation.
The performances here are passable, but no one stands out and despite the potential for fun turns, we don’t see much of that here. The tone is light, but rarely embraces the kind of over the top silliness the premise seems ripe to provide. A good example of this is David Fletcher-Hall as our villain, as this could have been a humorous, colorful effort, but instead, the movie takes a restrained, forgettable approach. I don’t know why the filmmakers wanted a serious tone at times, given the nature of the material, but in this role, that wasn’t a fruitful tactic. Seeing our heroes upend a wacky villain time and again would have punched up this otherwise mediocre narrative a little, which the movie sorely needs. As I said, these aren’t bad performances by indie family film standards, but there’s just not much to talk about. The cast also includes Kyler Charles Beck, Ben Hall, and Michael Gibbons.
Marc Fusion 