I have been skulking around RinkWorks for a while here and have vastly enjoyed the reader reviews. I became determined that I had to see this famous "Sinbad of the Seven Seas" movie so I went off to the local video store in pursuit. Since I intended to pick up one "deliberate" bad movie, I decided the rest had to be "serious" ones. Little did I know that I would stumble on another "baddy" accidentally.

Komodo has the distinction of being done by the same guy who did the special effects for Jurassic Park. A sure draw. It was not until the "Making of Komodo" mini-feature AFTER the movie that I discovered the guy DIRECTED this one.

The Scene: A Swampy Island just off the coast of some American town (doesn't seem to matter where; if they mentioned it, I didn't remember).

The Premise: Someone dumped Komodo dragon eggs in the swamp and now, twenty years later, they are hungry.

The movie begins with a boy's parents getting eaten. Skip to a year or so later and Boy is still traumatized. Enter Heroine, the Psychologist assigned to his case, who determines the best way to get him out of his trauma is to take him back to the place his parents died. I don't know if this is really good psychology or not, but it IS an overused plot device.

So Heroine and Boy travel back to the island in the company of a woman (presumably Boy's aunt; we'll call her M1, for "Meat 1").

Eventually they catch a ferry ride to the island with M2 (the ferry boat captain).

Already on the island are two men (Hero and M3) whose jobs are to kill the "endangered animals" for the big bad oil company man.

Basically the rest of the movie is various people and Komodos getting killed (with the reoccuring theme that they are endangered, and it is so sad they have to kill them).

What got me about this film is that the CG effects really were "Jurassic Park" quality. But, while JP had excellent animatronic and puppet effects, this one had...err...elaborate sock puppets.

Rating: 2.5 turkeys.

Scene to watch for: Hero wrestles with Big Foam (!) Komodo.

Best lines: "Maybe we should split up?" / "That is generally a bad idea." / "Yeah, I will go this way."

Things that make you go "Huh?": Every time they switch from the excellent CG effects to the awful puppets.

Watch the "making of" featurette after the movie (on the video). In it, the effects guy explains, "You see the Komodo's head in the rear view mirror -- that's a sock puppet."