TheLittleSongbird Although I was intrigued by the premise, I was expecting little in terms of quality as most SyFy movies are cheaply made, cheesy and badly written and acted. Having not read the book(s)(and I'd always try to judge a movie on its own terms anyway), I was pleasantly surprised by Anonymous Rex. True, the dialogue quality is still rather cheesy and stilted, and while the premise is interesting with a number of fun scenes there are also some scenes that came across as implausible or came across as loose ends. The ending too felt rather strange and abrupt in tone, and while there have been far worse performances Sam Trammel is a wooden lead. On the other hand, the editing for SyFy is actually quite good, more slick than choppy thankfully, and the effects not only are decent-looking but also not over-used. The dinosaurs are a fun and sometimes menacing presence, the sound effects are not bizarre but suitably eerie in places and the music is rousing in alternative to generic. The characters are thankfully more interesting than the usual annoying one-dimensional stereotypes that plague SyFy's movies, and while nobody is a standout as such(though also no-one is a complete waste either) the acting is still efficiently done on the whole. All in all, definitely could've been more but for me Anonymous Rex is one of the better SyFy originals. 6/10 Bethany Cox

jean-197 What a find for a fun sci fi flick! If it ain't a cult classic, it should be. Engaging acting, really well-written film noir spoof. We couldn't stop chuckling - all the while enjoying the sci fi plot. Looked as fun to make as it was to watch - I'd make it a must for a film class. Loved the small but effective special effects - no expensive whammies - and the movie did not suffer a bit for it. Same with locations - what a great example of a good sci fi movie, fun as all get-out, without having to be a mega-bucks extravaganza. Loved the casting, and was fun to see Faye Dunaway flicking a reptilian tongue at the audience. Fine ensemble acting. For me, the humorous, well-written script was the gem of the movie.

groucho3710 Looked like it might be a fun scifi-monster movie—mutated dinosaurs living among humans AS humans? Nice spooky little shot of a normal-looking guy walking along, close up on his face, and one eye turns all yellow and feral with vertical pupil, then he walks on, looking just like everyone else. Fun stuff.But guess what? The story is being told by the monster. How's that grab ya? In flashbacks. And not only that, before you can decide this is too crazy for words, the movie starts jabbing a little bit at itself. It's funny. The "dinos" get high on ordinary spices, like basil and rosemary and thyme. Shades of Alien Nation slags getting pie-eyed on sour milk, but why not? And guess what else. The dinos aren't as bad as all that. They have families and jobs and friends and species-specific quirks (everybody knows that triceratops are herd beings and like to have lunch in groups) and—how timely can we get?—radicals who don't like being made to fit in for the sake of survival and would like to let dinos be dinos. That is to say killer carnivores. The top of the food chain. Thus the central conflict of the movie. There are also some pleas for toleration of differences that might strike some as heavy-handed, but actually they didn't do a bad job of showing how painful it can be to spend a lifetime "passing," or living in the saurian version of the closet, which used to involve rubber disguises which evolved into 21-century hologram-creating electronics.They touched a lot of bases in this movie, kept it moving, kept the characters interesting and more than one-dimensional, and took themselves just seriously enough to give you something to think about. And then there was the secret of the big bad private eye's daughter… but that would require a spoiler alert.Dinos. You gotta love 'em, claws and all. They're tough, they're smart, they're adaptable, and mostly don't act like they should all be deported to Jurassic Park. But still, would you want your daughter to marry one? Maybe the moral was We aren't like you, and maybe we aren't as benign as we'd like you to believe, but we aren't as bad as your worst nightmares about us either. We are what we are, but you'll never know what that is as long as we have to pretend to be what you are. That isn't an abstraction for a lot of people living on the planet right now, it's just what they have to deal with. Ask anyone in Michigan who has to live with the consequences of Proposal Two.But I don't want to end on a surly note. It was a pretty good movie, if a bit hard to categorize. It had action, love, murder, intrigue, food for thought, even comedy. Anonymous Rex. Shoulda known from the title.

vhsiv Having not read any of the novels, I don't feel that I can supply a fully-informed critique; however I can provide a critique of the piece as a piece of filmed entertainment.I'm usually disappointed by most SciFi fare, but I checked this one out on the basis of the reviews that the novels had gotten.I was less than impressed by the script. For months I had heard what a funny and entertaining piece of work the books were, but that value failed to manifest on the screen. The initial discouragement of 'a modern-day dinosaur-detective, pursuing his career disguised as a human in a rubber costume' failed to be salvaged from the execution of the screenplay. While the 'rubber-suit idea had been updated, the script and the actors' performances didn't seem to be in on the joke - the voice-overs were dire, and the story wasn't funny or humorous, just contrived.In the end, this film was no better than the average broken-genre absurdity that the SciFi Channel has been broadcasting over the past several years: It was just a bland disappointment manufactured by a network that either doesn't understand genre television or has bent so far over to broaden their audience that they've alienated their original constituents with 'family fun' like this feature.