Italian
Those who grew up watching FX-heavy seriocomic mainstream creature features of the 1980s and ’90s may enjoy the nostalgic fun had at their expense in “The Invisible Raptor.” Viewers resistant to a landslide of scatological humor, however, may find the laughs pretty slim in this overlong, uninspired monster spoof. Director Mike Hermosa’s indie feature is enterprisingly polished, but the weak material provided by Mike Capes and Johnny Wickham’s screenplay might’ve worked better boiled down to the length of a “Funny or Die” short. After a run of genre festival gigs, it’s being launched by Well Go USA on limited screens and digital platforms Dec. 6.
At Tyler Corporation, a high-security lab holds top-secret results of genetic engineering: the titular velociraptor, which cannot be seen … or trusted. Developed for a murky “weaponization program,” it has brains as well as brawn, enough to outsmart the technicians present and escape its jail cell-like cage — which means specially billed Sean Astin’s cameo is bloodily short-lived. It then follows his oblivious coworker Bobby Gilchrist out of the company compound to DinoWorld, a cheesy nearby attraction where the carnivorous biped’s mood is unimproved by learning the last of its kin went extinct about 70 million years ago.
Delivering such tidbits of knowledge to paying customer parents and kids is Dr. Grant Walker (Capes), a once-esteemed paleontologist ruined when a colleague stole and discredited his big discovery some years back. Now he’s reduced to wearing Indiana Jones gear, daring children to smell fossilized feces and performing the “Dino Rap Dance” with theme park security guard Denny (David Shackelford) in a green furry costume. Today that routine is especially humiliating due to the unexpected presence of ex-girlfriend Amber (Caitlin McHugh Stamos), who’s on an outing with her grade-school daughter.
Popular on Variety A few area disappearances and giant poop deposits later, these three adults are trying to track down the runaway beast, local police (Richard Riehle, David Theune) having laughed off their warning that an invisible dinosaur is on the loose. A key eventual ally is Sandy Martin as Henrietta McClusky, a foul-mouthed chicken farmer.
The invisibility gags are handled deftly enough, as is the gore. Turns out this revived memento from the Cretaceous Era, approximately the size of a station wagon, has a particular penchant for beheading its human snacks. “Raptor” has a promising central concept in aiming to spoof the tropes of Spielbergian family fantasy adventures like “Jurassic Park” and “Gremlins,” something Romanian composer Mihai Ciolca’s big original score does with particular aplomb. But otherwise it does that in fairly witless fashion, rarely progressing beyond the name-dropping level of movie reference in-jokes (the story is even set in “Spielbergh County”) and a lowbrow fixation on all things anal.
There are a handful of more absurdist gags that signal a loopier, “Airplane!”-like direction the film might have gone in. But for the most part, we must settle for humor on the level of a bloody mess with a severed ear sticking out being called “eerie,” a “Karen” neighbor actually named Karen, use of practically every known synonym for fecal matter and way too much rope given to Shackelford’s strenuously unfunny sidekick. While several participants have comedy backgrounds (Wick has performed with Upright Citizens Brigade), the best you can say about what they’ve come up with here is that it doesn’t rise above a mediocre night of club-stage improv.
Nonetheless, it has a fairly slick surface that might’ve ably supported a higher grade of satire, even if budgetary limits are underlined by only one larger setpiece (a raptor attack on a suburban house dance party). Best in cast is Capes, who makes a comedic virtue of reacting with incredulous distaste to the goings-on around his character … though you might also consider that an all-too-valid reaction to the material he’s co-penned. And given the numerous times when lame riffing on juvenile yuks grinds the film’s gears to a halt, its nearly two-hour runtime feels awfully indulgent.
