A brilliant film that helped define a genre

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Ahhh, one of the classics from my Godzilla-obsessed childhood. Seemed so much better back then..but apart from that, we have a Dinosaur obsessed scientist who believes that humans should be wiped out (except for her I guess) and the Dinosaurs brought back to life, hence why she's breeding them back into existence with chickens. The movie has an interesting plot but the way it unfolds really leaves you scratching your head sometimes. Like, how on earth did an egg that's bigger than a full grown chicken...come out of a full grown chicken? I guess it kinda looked like the chicken actually exploded due to the size of the egg, but you don't really find out. It's extremely obvious in many scenes that they are literally using a large hand puppet for the dinosaur, simply snapping its jaws up and down at peoples mid sections. I mean hey, it's no classic but its one of those movies you watch when you're a teen and its late at night on the weekends. Wouldn't mind watching it again.

I've been a huge dinosaur nut ever since I was 3 years old. Possibly even before that, but my memory of being one goes back to when I was 3 (Yes, I actually remember this) and I saw my very first look at a dinosaur – a rubber (and I've since been told a very annoyingly squeaky) toy Triceratops. My parents bought it for me and from that moment on, my life's biggest passion was born – Dinosaurs. Growing up (and still to this day), I have to see anything that has dinosaurs in it, no matter how good or bad. As a kid, that wasn't really a problem – until 1993 when my 8-year-old eyes befell a little VHS tape on the video store shelf called Carnosaur. The dinosaur on the cover looked just awesome (again, at the time and to my kid eyes), as I had never before seen a live-action dinosaur beyond old black and white movies (side note: When I saw Jurassic Park for the first time later that very same year, it blew my little mind). I looked at the pictures on the back of the box and instantly knew I just had to see this movie. However, when I went to go bring it to my parents to rent it for me, they had forbidden it because it had the dreaded R Rating that has a long and evil history of stopping many young kids in their tracks. Now, to my young mind, I couldn't understand why a dinosaur movie - something I had thought was a topic that was always kid-friendly - was R Rated. Over the years, I kept seeing not only Carnosaur but it's growing number of sequels – first Carnosaur 2 and then Carnosaur 3: Primal Species, always checking out the pictures on the back and thinking how awesome these movies must be. Then in 2001, once I entered Grade 10 in High School and I was able to go out and rent what I wanted, the next time I saw the Carnosaur VHS tape sitting in that video store, I snatched it up and watched it. And yes...it was bad. Very bad. Horrible. Dreadful even. And I loved every minute of it.

Reading about Carnosaur, I was expecting a terribly cheap movie and for it to be blatantly derivative of the Steven Spielberg classic Jurassic Park. While far from a good movie, and certainly nowhere near as fun, thrilling or intense as Jurassic Park, I was expecting far worse than what I saw. Diane Ladd relishes her mad scientist, and this is one totally bonkers mad scientist, and the baby carnosaur is genuinely scary. Carnosaur is also gorier and bloodier than JP, and the gore is actually quite good and has moments where it is used inventively to the extent that you may be put off eating for some time after. Carnosaur is a very cheap-looking movie though, the sets lack colour and the camera work and editing lack finesse and cohesion. But I agree about the special effects and the animatronics on the dinosaurs faring worst in this regard, they are truly dreadful and definitely some of the worst dinosaur effects I've seen for any movie in my life. The score is not particularly rousing and has nothing that leaps out as memorable. It doesn't distract from what's going on as such but it just doesn't add anything either, it's just there and fails to make much of an impact. The script doesn't work either, nor does the story. The dialogue is stodgy, cheesy and overly-talky, while the story- not doing much with a decent if rather silly concept- apart from some inventive gory scenes is stripped of suspense, scenes that should scare can be unintentionally funny instead, the romantic plot line is mawkish and slows things down in the middle and the prehistoric rampage antics do get predictable quickly. The characters read of every cliché the writers could find and are poorly developed, no scratch that, the movie certainly knows what it tries to be which is good but while it does strive for some fun and scares(though not really succeeding) the characters are almost completely forgotten in the process. Of the acting only Ladd makes any kind of impression, the rest just sleepwalk through their roles and don't seem to care less about their characters' situations. Overall, could have been worse, especially considering what I'd read, but not a good movie. I recommend it partially for those who want a bit of silly fun without having to think too much, but for those who does know what to expect but still want to see some kind of quality put into it they may want to look elsewhere. 4/10 Bethany Cox

After a series of strange deaths rock their small desert town, a group of friends tie the incidents to a scientist's genetically-engineered dinosaurs running amok in an attempt to pave over society and race to stop them.This here turned out to be quite an enjoyable and cheesy rip-off at times. One of its better aspects is that the film's actually quite bloody and gory, much more so than expected which is a great factor. With the shower of blood on display, we also get plenty of limbs ripped off, dismemberments and decapitations, which is found in the movie's highlight sequence where it attacks a group of protesters chained to a series of trees and it swoops down to chomp on them in quite vicious manners, leading to a big action chase but with all the gore on display, even coming up with a realistic manner of doing so with muscle and tissue visibly shown to be pulled away from the victim makes for an impressive visual. While this does have a slew of problems with regards to its special effects being obviously a man's hand in a puppet being whisked through the scenery to simulate it's advancement through the area, these moments of utter cheese work to create a sense of charm with the film that's almost impossible to top, even though the story has a ton of continuity problems, a downer of an ending and several other problems. It's good points outweigh the flaws, only if they appeal to you though.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.