Before "The Velocipastor," there was “Tammy and the T-Rex,” a goofy, bizarre, and delightful dinosaur-themed movie about teenage love and weird science. A baby-faced Paul Walker (7 years before “The Fast and the Furious”) plays Michael, a high-school football star. A run-in with some hoodlums and a mad scientist leads to Michael's brain being installed in an animatronic T-Rex, and it is up to his girlfriend Tammy (Denise Richards) to save him.
This is a pure cult classic. The story goes that Director Stewart Raffill was approached by a theme park owner who had gotten his hands on an animatronic dinosaur. The T-Rex was scheduled to be shipped to Texas in 2 weeks, and the guy suggested they try to make a movie with it first. In record time, Raffill wrote a script around the beast and filmed a low-budget movie.
Is it good? Well, that depends on your expectations. It's really dumb, but I found it silly, funny, and an unmitigated good time. You may recognize Terry Kiser from “Weekend at Bernie's” as the mad scientist, and he actually classes the film up a bit, as does J. Jay Saunders as the black sheriff, named Sheriff Black. Denise Richards can't act her way out of a wet paper sack, but she sure looks good. Paul Walker is not much of a thespian, either, although he doesn't actually get a lot of screen time. That animatronic dinosaur is amazing, though! It really has a lot of movement and expressions, and may be the best actor in the film.
This is not a must-see like, say “UHF” or “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” or even “The Velocipastor,” but if you dig a goofy cult classic, you can put this one on your list.
3 stars out of 5
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