Galaxy of the Dinosaurs

The lowest of budgets and the most meager of production values greet us right from the start. Effects, camerawork, sound design, editing of both sound and image, music "production design" and "art direction," "action" sequences and "stunts," and costume design all bear the appearance of quite literally being whipped up by and for a home movie. Save for James Black, who has enjoyed an enduring career in film and TV, the cast is comprised entirely of nonprofessionals, collaborators of filmmaker J. R. Bookwalter - and meaning no offense to any of them, but that lack of training or experience does show quite clearly. The writing, too, unmistakably reflects lack of experience, as every single element thereof is rough, stilted, sketchy, and awkward. Even though he had more than a few other titles under his belt by the time he made this, Bookwalter's direction is also less than fully convincing. Oh, and please don't miss the choppy cuts to stop-motion animation (manipulated stock footage thereof?) and recycled shots, the environs of which do not remotely comport with the filming location in which our actors appear.

'Galaxy of the dinosaurs' is very distinctly the exact type of feature that any of us might make with a group of friends if we had bare-bones equipment and enough gumption to do so. It's not enough to say that this is an indie movie, and far from a major motion picture - it is, emphatically, the very opposite. This is the result of having a silly idea, and following through on it, no matter what it takes or what the finished product looks like. With that in mind, the only thing about the picture that's actually surprising is that it somehow found its way onto the Internet for wide dissemination. And on that note: despite everything, I honestly don't think this is bad. It's exactly what it's supposed to be; to what end can we especially criticize a harmless, ridiculous lark made among friends?

Preposterous as it all is, some of the humor is lightly amusing, and even clever. The story could absolutely have used more development, but such as it is, I think there are some good ideas here, and the same goes for the screenplay at large. I can say with all due sincerity that some folks I personally know, who have no professional background, could and have performed more capable editing and direction than what is achieved here - but even so, from a technical standpoint, this is executed with sufficient competence to put the movie together on a rudimentary level. I will note that on every single level, 'Galaxy of the dinosaurs' is unquestionably several huge steps down even from Bookwalter's horror flick 'Ozone,' which followed one year after this slice of cheese; this tells me that either the filmmaker learned an unreasonably great deal in a few months' time, or (more likely) that he was deliberately overcooking this title to accomplish what he wanted. And that, I dare say, only reinforces that this feature as we see it was purely by design.

Even if we grant some allowances for the level on which it operates, however - just because it's not abjectly awful does not mean it's good. I'm inclined to believe that the movie we see is exactly the movie Bookwalter envisioned, even though he probably could have actually done better. Yet on that note, it would have taken very, very little to help this film stand a little taller and more proudly, and even those bare minimal steps were not taken. 'Galaxy of the dinosaurs' is and was intended to be a farce, but tighter writing, more mindful editing and direction, and more careful employment of footage of the dinosaurs would have significantly improved the feature without meaningfully altering it. Case in point, we get a ludicrous amount of plot dropped on us in the last 15 minutes, to the point of it being decidedly overbearing.

At length, however: I don't hate this. I see what it is, what it wanted to be, and I do think it works on its chosen level. The utmost generosity doesn't change the fact that it could have been better, and Bookwalter could have done better - but here we are nonetheless. Save it for a lazy day when you're crunched for time but want to fill it with a movie of some sort, regardless of quality. Don't go out of your way, but if you come across 'Galaxy of the dinosaurs,' and are willing and prepared to engage with total schlock, there are far worse ways to spend your time.