Tammy and the T-Rex
5 stars
Two years ago, a friend of mine first introduced me to Tammy and the T-Rex: “Dinosaurs? Romance? On YouTube?” I thought to myself. “This is too good to be true”.It was not.
We spent the next hour and a half watching Stewart Raffill’s incredible brainchild, a memory I recall with great fondness. The Citizen Kane of dinosaur-romances – I invite you to treat yourself to this unique piece of cinema. Written in a week on the prompt of a shady animatronic T-Rex owner: “I don’t have a story, but we have to start filming within the month!” TATR tells the story of star-crossed lovers Michael (Paul Walker) and Tammy (Denise Richards), kept apart only by Tammy’s bitter, violent boyfriend Billy who decides to teach Michael a lesson roman style: by locking him in a lion enclosure.
One hospital kidnapping and a raunchy (don’t ask) brain transplant later our protagonist finds himself trapped in the body of an animatronic T-Rex. A moment potent with emotion, fit to lacerate the heart of any hardened Game of Thrones viewer, follows as Michael watches his own body, lying dead on the laboratory table, from behind the T-Rex’s plastic eyes. The viewer is best advised to consider this moment of character motivation when contemplating his later killing sprees. If the characters crushed to death underfoot are too much to bear, remember that Michael is also an orphan raised by his alcoholic uncle.
Initially, the amount of murder Tammy’s beloved T-Rex commits inclined me to suggest dinosaurs remain relegated to troublesome forces of nature, or less, as in Jurassic park (released conspicuously less than a year before TATR). Upon further reflection, this feels unfair. As a giant T-Rex, Michael’s passion is uninhibited by the primitive Judeo-Christian values which keep us in perpetual servitude to capitalism’s unjust and oppressive overlords, represented by the manipulative, sleazy Dr Wachenstein. Only when our T-Rex-come-Casanova turns on its oppressor, killing him (SPOILERS), could Michael be liberated and the means of production that enslaved him be used for liberation. TATR works as a socio-political commentary, subtly illustrating how capitalism (as represented by our T-Rex) can only lead to death and suffering, calling each and every viewer to revolution.
If T-Rex killing sprees aren’t so much your thing, fear not: romance abounds, as sparks fly between astoundingly famous leads Paul Walker (Fast & Furious, She’s All That) and Denise Richards (Starship Troopers, Charlie Sheen Spouse). I can’t comment on dialogue, having watched an auto-translated Italian version of the flick, but I can tell that action trumps words here. When Michael appears at Tammy’s window, a towering therapod, he does not lament her beauty, as in Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene. He instead carries her off and brings her flowers, a gesture this reviewer considers far more romantic.
This film scores on every level, emotion, action, deeper meaning. The only thing for you to do now is to watch it.
