merklekranz Preposterous premise, bad acting, annoying camera speed ups, and ninety minutes of nonsense. That would accurately describe "Anonymous Rex", an amateurish wannabe sci-fi. It's sad to see the likes of Faye Dunaway and Isaac Hayes in this disaster. The presence of Daniel Baldwin is not surprising, as he has an almost unblemished record of appearing in rubbish films. This is supposed to be a science fiction / detective drama investigating an underground society of surviving dinosaurs, that somehow have adapted to human size and form with holographic disguises. If you can buy that premise, then I guess this is your movie. Others beware. - MERK

crowrobot 'Anonymous Rex' is a pale, PALE shadow of the cockeyed brilliance of the books. While the setup is rather ludicrous, the books had a lot of fun with the concept. The narration sounded like something out of the back corner of Bruce Campbell's mind, the characters were engaging, and the dialogue was actually funny. Here... They ruined it. Whoever made this movie RUINED IT! There's no humor, no excitement, no LIFE to this movie. It takes itself too seriously. That is a fatal flaw when you're dealing with something as completely insane as this. Terrible acting, script (whose bonehead idea was it to give Ernie a human daughter?), special effects, everything completely and utterly SUCKED. Avoid this movie at all costs.

groucho3710 Looked like it might be a fun scifi-monster movie—mutated dinosaurs living among humans AS humans? Nice spooky little shot of a normal-looking guy walking along, close up on his face, and one eye turns all yellow and feral with vertical pupil, then he walks on, looking just like everyone else. Fun stuff.But guess what? The story is being told by the monster. How's that grab ya? In flashbacks. And not only that, before you can decide this is too crazy for words, the movie starts jabbing a little bit at itself. It's funny. The "dinos" get high on ordinary spices, like basil and rosemary and thyme. Shades of Alien Nation slags getting pie-eyed on sour milk, but why not? And guess what else. The dinos aren't as bad as all that. They have families and jobs and friends and species-specific quirks (everybody knows that triceratops are herd beings and like to have lunch in groups) and—how timely can we get?—radicals who don't like being made to fit in for the sake of survival and would like to let dinos be dinos. That is to say killer carnivores. The top of the food chain. Thus the central conflict of the movie. There are also some pleas for toleration of differences that might strike some as heavy-handed, but actually they didn't do a bad job of showing how painful it can be to spend a lifetime "passing," or living in the saurian version of the closet, which used to involve rubber disguises which evolved into 21-century hologram-creating electronics.They touched a lot of bases in this movie, kept it moving, kept the characters interesting and more than one-dimensional, and took themselves just seriously enough to give you something to think about. And then there was the secret of the big bad private eye's daughter… but that would require a spoiler alert.Dinos. You gotta love 'em, claws and all. They're tough, they're smart, they're adaptable, and mostly don't act like they should all be deported to Jurassic Park. But still, would you want your daughter to marry one? Maybe the moral was We aren't like you, and maybe we aren't as benign as we'd like you to believe, but we aren't as bad as your worst nightmares about us either. We are what we are, but you'll never know what that is as long as we have to pretend to be what you are. That isn't an abstraction for a lot of people living on the planet right now, it's just what they have to deal with. Ask anyone in Michigan who has to live with the consequences of Proposal Two.But I don't want to end on a surly note. It was a pretty good movie, if a bit hard to categorize. It had action, love, murder, intrigue, food for thought, even comedy. Anonymous Rex. Shoulda known from the title.

RvrendJim Dinosaurs didn't die out. They live among us, in disguise. And some of them are private detectives. That's the premise of Anonymous Rex, written by Joe Menosky and based on the book by Eric Garcia. The show successfully blends fantasy with hard boiled detective drama, moving at a brisk pace from start to finish. I think it works best because of the matter-of-fact tone of it all. The show takes itself seriously enough without becoming a spoof of the PI genre. This a detective show that just happens to include dinosaurs in holographic costumes. With such a fantastic premise, suspension of disbelief takes a little work. But the show pulls it off thanks to some very crisp writing, nifty direction, and excellent performances from the cast. Every actor is spot-on for their character, with some nice performances turned in by Faye Dunaway and Isaac Hayes as members of a dinosaur council. While the two hour movie stands alone, it also sets up what would be a terrific weekly series. Dino For Hire? Sounds like a stretch. But it works, and works surprisingly well.