A Review of 'Dinosaur' with Fred Savage
Phillip may not be able to look at any part of his room without seeing something having to do with dinosaurs, but is only through the magic of Charmer that he realizes that dinosaurs are a good subject for his report. Fred Savage once again shows off his acting chops by reacting so happily to the news that you would think he just found out what was originally diagnosed as inoperable cancer is in fact a magic diamond that will give him super powers. Look at him, in the second picture he looks like he's about to orgasm. Although considering that he just got down to listening to "Mesozoic Mind", that isn't too far fetched.
Content with the idea of doing a report on dinosaurs Phillip goes to sleep. This is prime time for a dream sequence.
I've also just realized I've written ten pages and am only six minutes into this damn video. You people better like this because I could have spent half an hour making fun of Power Rangers and called it a day. Instead I'm going the extra mile for you.
First a fantasy, and now a dream sequence, who do these people think they are, Saved by the Bell? In the dream sequence Phillip finds himself wandering around some weird cave. Phillip is confused, but Fred Savage is just glad that he no longer has to appear on camera in pajamas.
"Dinosaurs, what were dinosaurs? How did they get so big? Why? Why?" Phillip questions while wandering through the cave. Lucky for him a disembodied voice, which may belong to God, decides to help him out. The voice tells him dinosaurs are all around, if he knows were to look.
Phillip understandably freaks out because a mysterious voice is talking to him in a cave. The voice tells Phillip that dinosaurs are right under his nose.
Phillip assumes that by nose the voice means shoes, and exclaims "There are nothing but rocks here" This pisses off God we starts an earthquake and yells at Phillip for thinking learning about dinosaurs would be easy.
"Hey I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything personal" Phillip says.
"And I meant you have to search for the truth" God says, emphasizing the word search.
Phillip then enters a room where a fossil is sitting on a pedestal. Which if you ask me is a pretty easy way to find a fossil. After that searching comment I thought he would have some hard work to do, but instead he just has to walk into the next room. He cracks it open, and then asks what a fossil has to do with dinosaurs. What the hell Phillip? You obviously like dinosaurs, but don't know anything about how they connect to fossils? That makes you look pretty damn stupid.
God then goes into super educational mode, telling us all about dinosaurs. I could never pay close attention to this part.
The voice explains that before people knew about dinosaurs they made up stories about monsters that might of existed.
Phillip interrupts at this point and says "Like dragons, and Godzilla."
Godzilla? I think they knew about dinosaurs in the 1950s there Phillip.
God then explains that people learned about dinosaurs from rocks, which completely confuses Phillip.
"The grooves on a record a song, so do the grooves on a fossil" God explains, not that Phillip understands because it's the 80s, the era of cassette tapes. You think that Phillip is buying Charmer albums on records? No way. I'm not even sure that analogy is all that good. I don't think if you put a fossil on a record player it would make a dinosaur.
I like how at this point the video is just showing pictures they stole from children's books.
Phillip makes a point that bones don't tell about muscle, skin tone, or anything like that. God refutes this by pointing out they do, without any more explanation. Take that Phillip she showed you.
God says that scientists have to think like detectives, and sometimes they make silly mistakes. When she says that they show this dinosaur. I'm not sure why this is considered a silly mistake. It looks pretty solid to me. Dinosaurs look like lizards with spikes, and that thing looks like a lizard with spikes. God needs to cut the scientists some slack, not all of us are omnipotent, jerk.
Now Phillip understands the basic idea of fossils, but still wants to know where dinosaurs come from. So God has to explain about the world being covered in water, and then some of the water drying, and animals coming out, blah, blah, blah. No kid is going to be able to pay attention to any of this. I'm in my 20s and I'm bored to death.
Phillip calls the stegosaurus ugly, and God says the ones on the right are beautiful. I've got to say, those ones aren't much prettier then the stegosaurus. I think God just has a twisted sense of beauty. This is why there are so many ugly people in the world but only one Charles Barkley.
Basically instead of giving information of dinosaurs, Phillip and God just talk about how awesome they are. After what seems like an eternity the dinosaur jerk off party ends, and Phillip is once again entering a room with a fossil in it.
Phillip opens the fossil and it starts shining. They don't show the inside of the fossil but it looks like the same green glowing thing that was inside the brief case in Pulp Fiction.
Then without any explanation we are in a jungle. The camera show some leaves, then cut to a dinosaur then cut to the leaves, then a claw, then a super close up of a dinosaur, all the while the music gets more and more intense. Then all of a sudden-
BAM, out of no where they start flashing to one dinosaur eating another. The entire scene is terribly inappropriate for the video, its way to intense for young kids. This isn't even the worse part. They show close ups of entrails spilling out of the wounded dinosaur, and blood on the predator. Back when I watched this on a regular basis this part always scared me. I wasn't scared enough to not watch the video again the next day, but still scared.
The sequence ends with the scene turning into a postcard that Phillip puts into his report. I guess the dinosaur killing and eating the other was a representation of what Phillip goes through when he writes papers for school. I wonder if he gets extra credit for having pictures in his report. Putting in pictures seems like a good idea, but it doesn't always work. I illustrated many homework sheets, but never got extra credit. Maybe the teacher didn't think Mario Brothers tied into spelling enough to warrant extra credit.