Rankin/Bass

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2022) The best moment in The Last Dinosaur comes early on, as the film uses a scrapbook to establish its larger-than-life protagonist, a big-game hunter who happens to be a billionaire whose company has discovered a long-lost Antarctic valley where dinosaurs roam. After that, the film can’t help but steadily slide into mediocrity and boredom, albeit not without quirky moments along the way. This being a Rankin/Bass co-production with a Japanese special-effects company, there’s a very odd blend of slap-dash scripting with man-in-suit 1970s visual effects. You can wince because of the casual sexism related to the female characters (although there’s a bit of role reversal when the “easy seduction” of a character is revealed to be a cold-blooded ruse from the seduced) or the unconvincing special effects, but The Last Dinosaur steadily loses interest the longer it goes on and our hunter aims for the biggest target of his life. The film deservedly ended up as a made-for-TV title (even if it wasn’t made for TV) and, even then, probably felt dated in its depiction of a hunter billionaire as a hero. There is a title song over the credits, though, if that’s the kind of thing that can make it better.