The Age of Commercialism

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The film is one of the rare ones that deals with the subject of dinosaurs in modern Africa. A brontosaurus like creature about the size of a grown hippopotamus has been rumored since the 1920s to live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Cameroon. Many expeditions have gone to the difficult to explore wetlands and rivers where it allegedly lives, only to return with no compelling evidence to show for their expensive efforts. A pretty good action-adventure film could be made in which a real dinosaur family is found. Unfortunately, what we get from Disney is boredom and a frustrating, hopelessly lame plot.For example, our heroes, played by William Katt and Sean Young, with no help from anyone, find two 70-foot parent dinosaurs and their five foot long baby living in nice dry park-like land after less than one week of checking out the bush country, and all it takes to lure the big brutes is some food! These same heroes then drive the baby off when he pesters them as they are too busy kissing to worry about safeguarding this priceless discovery. He is promptly caught by the evil scientist Patrick McGoohan who wants to make a fortune from him. He had killed a man in an African city some months before to obtain his blurry photos of the dinosaurs. (No, I am not making this up.) Plot developments go from bad to worse as every major character makes bad decision after bad decision. Just labeling it a "kid movie" and excusing its flaws on that basis does not work in my book. Disney was releasing some poorly received fantasy movies in the mid 1980s and BABY: SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND was definitely in that group.

The problem with cutting edge technology is that it can very soon look laughably obsolete. Any modern watcher will just laugh at the creaky old Brontosaurii. So lets talk about the people.Sean Young plays her role reasonably well. A pretty, long-legged female Palaentologist is always going to struggle to be taken seriously. The other pretty long-legged Palaentologist, playing her husband, made the automaton dinosaurs look almost convincing. He was atrocious.For a kids movie it is fairly risqué. There are some topless dancers, an almost-sex scene between the young lovers and some cold-blooded and murderous behaviour from my only reason for watching: Patrick McGoohan. He plays Dr. Kiviat and almost the first scene finds him viciously stabbing another scientist to steal some information about the location of the lost dinosaur he has spent his life searching for. The unexpectedly perceptive Sean Young is also on the hunt however and sends Kiviat on a wild pterodactyl chase.Kiviat is not to be outdone and employs the corrupt military to assist him in finding the lost creatures. Once again (for a kids movie) the soldiers behave ruthlessly as they attempt to shoot the young Palaentologists and succeed in annihilating the father-dinosaur. Unbeknownst to Kiviat there is a baby Brontosaurus which has been befriended by the young couple. Eventually they fall into the scientists hands.There is a scene which actually took me by surprise. Kiviat is in conversation with the military leader. It becomes evident that the officer seems even more dangerous than the scientist. McGoohan kills him. He plays the scene in such a way that I was convinced he was having a change of heart; so I was genuinely shocked when he emerges from the tent, raises the alarm and blames the young couple for the murder!! You just can't keep a good actor down.Eventually McGoohan is eaten by the mother dino who rescues her Baby and so it ends. Rights are wronged - is that what I meant? I have read that this movie was plagued by technical difficulties. The robots that worked so well in the factory became very cranky in the hot African jungle locations. Long delays in shooting scenes could explain the fraught appearance of some of the actors.Today, if you spend time at Disneyworld, more than one exhibit has "Baby" genes plain to see in their heritage.I also noticed in the credits that Rose Tobias-Shaw was the casting director for the film. So that's how they got McGoohan ?!

This is an almost totally entertaining flick which never flags; not in its tongue in cheek dialogue; not in its plot sequences; not in its amazing technical achievements (for its time) in getting the dinosaurs up and running. Sure the acting is pretty much black and white with Patrick McGoohan dispensing villany on the order of Gengis Khan on a bad day and William Katt and Sean Young surmounting all obstacles with a brio and dispatch that would have Arnold panting. There is also Baby herself, consistently endearing though up to, never over, the line. But one doesn't expect a movie about dinosaurs to take time out for character development. What there is of it is in the overly graphic scene of the female dinosaur mourning her slaughtered mate, a transcendent sequence that almost rips the fabric of the piece apart. That it manages to gets back to fantasy after this is a tribute to director B.WE.L. Norton and the frenetic pace he generates throughout. If you never had a dinosaur as a pet, you may be on the lookout for one after seeing Baby.

... and I actually gave it a ZERO on my personal 1-10 scale. I have been attending movies since 1952 and have seen well over 1000 in the theater (I don't rate movies that I see only on TV). This is the ONLY movie I have ever rated ZERO.My wife and I took our four children (then aged 15, 11, 8 and 6) and even the kids thought it was terrible. In fact, it was my daughter (now 26) who alerted me to this site (amazed that the movie was getting an overall rating of 4+).The animation of the dinosaurs looked amateurish at the time (and is even worse in retrospect), the acting (particularly by Sean Young) is atrocious and the story line is simply silly.