Q: Who has two thumbs extended upward after watching “Dinosaur Island” on Netflix? A: The re-animated zombie corpse of Roger Ebert. Oh, and me, though that would make it four thumbs, not two.
You know that you’re in the heart of Cheese-and-Sleaze Land when a movie begins with a closeup of a wild-eyed, wild-haired jungle beast of a woman screaming like a banshee at the camera while wearing little more than thongs and a thong, bare-breasted except for body paint in a color bearing a surprising resemblance to Boise State Bronco Blue. Any hope you may have for this film’s potential to elevate and celebrate life vanishes a moment later, when the camera cuts away to two parallel lines of scantily clad women brandishing spears and chanting rhythmically before a rough-hewn altar, upon which a woman writhing in a fur bikini struggles against the vines tethering her arms to the altar’s towering sides (though even a casual inspection reveals that the vines are looped around her wrists, not tied, and would probably fall limply to the ground if she would just open her hands and turn loose of them).
Why is she tied–er, looped to the altar? She’s a Snackable in a fur-bikini wrapper, a squirming sacrifice to the Great One–a snarling, bellowing Tyrannosaurus Rex rendered in stop-motion animation so shaky and erratic as to call to mind an image of Michael J. Fox doing an impression of Elvis dancing to “All Shook Up.” With more gratuitous nudity than one of Calvin Klein’s wet dreams; with dime-store plastic dinosaurs brought to life through ham-handed, conspicuous special effects that are almost capable of momentarily startling a slow-witted four-year-old child; and with acting more stiff, self-conscious, and unnatural than a break-dancing Mitt Romney, “Dinosaur Island” is 85 minutes of mediocrity sinking into banality under the weight of the director’s apathy and the actors’ indifference, most notable in the end for its almost complete lack of talent, wit, or imagination.
I ranked it four out of five stars on Netflix, in the hope that Netflix will start tossing more flicks like it my way. I would’ve given it five stars, but I don’t want Netflix to think that I lack discerning taste and a refined artistic sensibility.
