• Directed by “Julian Breen” (aka David DeCoteau)
• Written by Michael Davis and Neil Ruttenberg
• Starring
  • Fred Willard
  • Whitney Anderson
  • Pam Matteson
  • Dave Buzzotta
  • Bruce Weitz
• Produced by Karen L. Spencer
• Executive produced by Charles Band

By this third installment of this dino-kidvid franchise, it was a race to see which was more threadbare: the premise, or the cable-controlled dinosaur puppets. Given that the chasmosaurus puppet was actually showing cable through a tear in its foam latex skin in Prehysteria! 2 (1994), I almost expected this movie to resort to hiding the puppets behind potted plants or beneath dress-up clothes, like Steven Seagal failing miserably to conceal his spreading midsection. By those expectations, then, the miniature dinosaurs held up well; a little less mobile than before, perhaps, and the stegosaurus’s face looks more like a chewed-on eraser than ever, but if you’re looking for a singular weakness to the movie, the models aren’t it.

No, that distinction is split between the plot, the dialogue, the script, and the budget-attendant production values. In a series which never really had a lot going for it, this is definitely the weakest entry.

“We’re here! Didja miss us?”

In the time-honored fashion of cheap sequels, we start with footage culled from the previous two films, along with a voiceover (rendered in one of those vaguely “not from here” accents) explaining how the miniature dinosaurs are “creatures of fun and innocence, sacred and untouched, bringing joy and happiness to the world which discovered them.” Sure, if by “the world” you mean the roughly half-dozen characters who find out about them in each of the earlier films. The opening narration also plays up how much the dinosaurs love love love love raisins, with footage of how they were “lost” in the previous movie by being packed into a crate of raisins.

When we finally get to some original footage, it’s of old Mr. Cranston (Owen Bush), the man left in charge of the dinosaurs somewhere between the first and second movie, carting the dinos off to somewhere in the back of his pickup. Because these are mischievous and incredibly smart shrunken reptiles, they have figured out how to remove the gas cap from the truck, and Paula the brachiosaurus playfully inserts a number of raisins into the gas tank. When the truck rolls to a stop and Mr. Cranston raises the hood to putter with the engine, the dinos drop the tailgate, and presto! They’re free for another wacky adventure! NOTE: The remainder of this movie will be absolutely raisin-free. Makes you wonder why their affinity for raisins was hammered home so strongly in the preamble, when that time could have better been used to explain how the dinos acquire some of the surprising skills they’re going to demonstrate in the next hour and twenty minutes, like tying shoelaces together and playing charades.

[insert budget joke here]

The spot at which the dinos escape is immediately adjacent to a hoity country club, where old pro Hal MacGregor (Bruce Weitz of Hill Street Blues fame) spends his days being a smug and conniving cad. The adjoining property belongs to his brother Thomas (Fred Willard); it used to be a mini-golf course, but over the years has become something more of a scrapyard. Thomas’ daughter Ella (Whitney Anderson) is our pubescent protagonist: Obsessed with the ancestral sport of golf, she sneaks into the country club regularly to practice. She also decks herself out in plaid, papers her bedroom in pictures of famous Scots (like Rod Stewart, Sean Connery, Scotty from Star Trek (!), and the Bay City Rollers (!!)), and attempts to affect what is quite possibly the worst Scottish accent in the history of cinema. In fact, it may be the worst Scottish accent in the history of people. Aside from the inconsistent lilt that tells you she’s trying to do some kind of accent, the only way you can identify it as Scottish is by her random use of words like “wee” and “bonnie.” It’s embarrassing enough to make the entire nation of Scotland rise up against her and demand Anderson’s head on a pike. Hell, my own Scottish blood is a full three generations back in my pedigree, and I can feel that same bloodlust welling up inside of me.

I hadn’t looked up any information on this movie before watching it, so I didn’t already know that director “Julian Breen” was actually David DeCoteau. I started to clue once we’re introduced to Ella’s older brother Heath (Dave Buzzotta), though. I’m not just exactly sure what tipped me off; it might be the fact that he’s a well-exercised teen male who first appears with his shirt untucked and open. Whereas Ella thinks she’s a throwback to her Scottish ancestors, Heath seems to think that he’s actually Keanu Reeves’ character from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), complete with the musical aspirations. (He also wears a Quiet Riot T-shirt. In 1995? Seriously, what the hell?)

“I say it IS a DeCoteau film!”

Let’s see if we can set up some of the upcoming plotpoints as blatantly as the movie does. There’s a balloon payment coming up at the end of the week for the mini-golf, one for which Ella’s dad Thomas has no money. Uncle Hal wants to buy the putt-putt so that he can expand the golf course and put in a resort. (I know this is the hoary old “standing up to the man” cliche, but seriously: if he’s going to lose the place at the end of the week anyway, Dad’s refusal to sell doesn’t make him plucky, it makes him a cretin.) Thomas and Hal have had a bitter relationship for fifteen years, ever since Hal won a tournament and went pro while Thomas flinched on a putt and lost out; since then he’s hated the game of golf so much that he won’t pick up a club, and has let the mini-putt languish in disrepair. Ella’s mom, Michelle (Pam Matteson), a sculptor and metal artist, encased Thomas’s putter in concrete like Excalibur in its stone, waiting for the day when someone (hint hint) somewhere (hint hint) would pull it free.

The only other thing you need to know is that Uncle Hal loves making little friendly wagers all the time, and you’ve got pretty much every element you need to watch the entire plot fall together without the aid of human hands or creativity.

He’s about two gulps away from shooting a TV.

“But wait!” you ask. “The dinosaurs! How do they figure into this!” Oh, yeah. Them. They’re actually less necessary to this plot than in either of the two previous movies, but when they do intrude upon the storyline, they show themselves somehow to be more intelligent than Lassie, Flipper, the Littlest Hobo, and a whole room of Mogwai combined. Their uncanny powers of antagonist detection allow them to know to tie the evil caddy’s shoelaces together, somehow without being seen (remember that ludicrous opening shot from Puppet Master (1989)? This whole movie’s like that). Ella discovers them in the dilapidated mini-putt, where they inspire her to cleaning up the place (and prove themselves to be not-too-shabby golfers). With them as inspiration, Thomas has the brainstorm of rechristening the place as “Dino-Putt,” and though that balloon payment is due at the end of the week, they immediately begin making enough money (mostly from the bored children of the country-club parents) that despite the costs of rebranding the mini-golf with dinosaur bones, cavemen, etc., they’re still on their way to paying their debts. Makes you wonder exactly what Thomas had been doing, or not doing, to make money before. Oh, and Thomas’ reaction to the dinosaurs when he finally sees them? About what you’d expect if they were unusual-looking cats. In fact, the dinos spend half their time wandering untrammeled around the mini-golf, and no one even notices them.

There are plenty of pratfalls and machinations involving Uncle Hal’s cadre of evil caddies, and his attempts to please his potential resort investor, Mr. Yamamoto (John Fujioka). But in the end, it all comes down to a wager (gee, I never saw THAT coming!) on a mini-golf match between Ella and Uncle Hal. And gosh, we never have any doubt that an ill-coordinated twelve-year-old can beat a seasoned pro, because Thomas had told Ella the real secret to successful putting. Ready? “Choose a happy thought.” That’s right, it’s Putting The Peter Pan Way!

Lame-o banter in a tam o’shanter!

It’s all a bunch of well-worn cliches, spotted with lame Scottish gags (“haggisburgers!” hah!) and shoehorned-in dinosaur action. I’m guessing the condition of the dino puppets didn’t get much worse during this shoot, as they spent as much time on the peripheries as possible. (Madonna the pterodactyl, who was kept out of the action with an injury in the last movie to save on expensive stop-motion-and-bluescreen flying effects, here shows up apparently hale and hearty. She doesn’t fly; she just shows up occasionally, perched on some piece of set dressing.) Perhaps the plan was to continue the franchise further if possible, with old Mr. Cranston losing the dinosaurs somewhere new each time (i.e., somewhere near a cheap available shooting location). But with the idea well so very dry this time out, it’s for the best that the mini-dinosaurs went from here to the long, well-deserved repose of extinction.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 0
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Peter Dennis (“snooty driver”) played “Isaac Newton” in two episodes of Voyager, and “Admiral Hendricks” in another
  • (no, I’m not going to count the photo of Jimmy Doohan)