Review of Dinocroc (2004) by Paul F — 18 Apr 2007

Yesterday when I reviewed SnakeMan, I mentioned that is was the second of two types of killer animal films. Well, DinoCroc is the first of those types. In "Killer Animal Film Type 1," a corporation or government-sponsored research program (usually genetics) goes awry and either escapes in the form of said killer animals or affects the local fauna so that they become said killer animals. They are, of course, located near a small town populated by plucky young people, a local sheriff and the occasional doomed migrant worker or two. [i]Tremors[/i] is probably the best of these films, though it bypasses the research-gone-awry angle in favor of having no explanation at all, which works well, as it saves us endless shots of people in labcoats talking to each other about how important it is that nobody finds out about the work this project is doing.

In the first twenty minutes of [i]DinoCroc[/i], Joanna Pacula and Bruce Weitz argue in labcoats about how important it is that nobody finds out about the work their center is doing after their experiment escapes in order to wander around and devour locals. What kind of creature, you ask? Well, I'll give you a hint. The title of the movie is "DinoCroc." It is dino. It is croc.

It is CGI.

Now, I know I just went off on how terrible the use of CGI was in [i]SnakeMan[/i] and wondering how I could justify giving [i]DinoCroc[/i] a fairly significantly higher mark. (At least I'm assuming you are. I realize there are thousands of you that follow this blog carefully and I can only account for the thoughts of most of you.) It's partially that the CGI in DinoCroc is slightly better than that in SnakeMan--not exactly convincing, mind you, but they at least have the decency to keep the DinoCroc hidden from view most of the time. But it's also because the DinoCroc itself isn't a real creature--it's an amalgam of two, one of which hasn't existed for millions of years, so the odds of getting actual video footage of it is particularly slim. [i] SnakeMan[/i] could have just has easily used footage of some snakes, whereas [i]DinoCroc[/i] had to come up with its' own creature. And it looks better than a bunch of computer-generated snakes, if barely.

It also helps that [i]DinoCroc[/i] is a better-written, more competently-structured creature movie. It's more along the lines of Joe Dante's [i]Piranha[/i] (no big surprise, as both were produced by Roger Corman) in that it's tongue, while not exactly in cheek, is tilting to the side of the mouth enough to make you realize that the filmmakers were actually trying to have fun here. The cast is an entertaining batch of character actors, ranging from sheriff Charles Napier to Costas Mandylor as an Australian crocodile fighter (!) to Max Perlich as the absent-minded deputy, a welcome change from [i]SnakeMan[/i]'s batch of bland supporting cast and Stephen Baldwin.

The film goes through all the trappings of this sort of film with half a wink to the fact that they know they're trappings--how else do you explain the presence of a little kid looking for his three-legged dog named Lucky? Sure, things make little sense and characters don't really even bother reacting to the extreme situations they're in most of the time (Mandylor's character doesn't even flinch after watching a swimmer get eaten underwater) because, well, it's as though they all know they're in a crappy monster movie.

That said, it does get pretty dark toward the end, which kind of dampens the light monster movie tone they've had for most of the running time. And there's certainly nothing resembling suspense to be found here, but really, it's kind of hard to identify with characters being chased by a genetically-mutated dinosaur crocodile thing anyway, so that's not hugely shocking.

Sure, the CGI-laden attacks are unconvincing, but [i]DinoCroc[/i] manages to be marginally entertaining anyway due to a game cast and a particularly dark sense of humor, so it's hard for me to go along with the current RT or the similarly-low IMDb ratings, which give the film around a 3 on a 1-10 scale. I'm not saying that [i]DinoCroc [/i]isn't crap, but it's fun, marginally self-aware crap, and that puts it higher than most of the crap the Sci-Fi Channel's been polluting Saturday nights with.