Product Details

• Actors: Peter Horton, Liz Stauber, Kari Coleman, Charlene Sashuk, Daniel Libman
• Directors: Brett Leonard
• Writers: Andrew Gellis, David Young, Jeanne Rosenberg
• Producers: Andrew Gillis, Antoine Compin, Charis Horton, Michael Lewis
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Imax
• VHS Release Date: July 3, 2001
• Run Time: 45 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005J6V2
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #451,907 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Did you ever want to get so close to a mama tyrannosaur that you could pat her scaly reptilian snout? Now you'll know what that's like, thanks to aspiring paleontologist Ally Hayden (Liz Stauber), the teenage heroine of the 1998 IMAX film T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous. Ally's dino-expert father (Peter Horton) has just returned from his latest dig with a fossilized T. rex egg, and when Ally accidentally cracks the egg in her dad's museum laboratory, a puff of mysterious smoke catapults her back to the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs-- especially T. rex--ruled the Earth. With her imagination in full flight (along with an astonishingly realistic pterodactyl), Ally confirms the dinosaur theories of her own speculative research, and she also encounters pioneering dinosaur illustrator Charles Knight (Tuck Milligan) and legendary paleontologist Barnum Brown (Laurie Murdoch). Best of all, she comes face to face with a maternal tyrannosaur, earning its respect by protecting one of its incubating eggs.

T-Rex won't be as effective on DVD (where the IMAX 3-D effects are amusingly pointless), but it's guaranteed to please anyone who enjoyed the similarly astounding CGI effects of Walking with Dinosaurs. Stauber is a refreshingly normal teen star, and although much of the dialogue sounds like it was cribbed from a grade-school science text, its educational value is perfectly matched to the wonders of Ally's prehistoric adventure. Director Brett Leonard previously helmed the pioneering FX flick The Lawnmower Man, and here he demonstrates a warmer, more accessible sense of wonder for kids and parents alike. At 45 minutes, this IMAX dazzler never wears out its welcome. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

Dinosaurs are very much alive - at least in the mind of teenager Ally Hayden. When a museum accident transports Ally on an adverture back in time to explore the terrain and territory of life-size dinosaurs, she is thrust literally nose-to-nose with the largest and most realistic dinosaur ever to appear on a movie screen - the fearsome 20-foot tall, 15-ton Tyrannosaurus Rex.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars DESERVES MINUS 5 STARS! SAVE YOUR MONEY!, January 3, 2002

By 

Eric B. Norris (Santa Clara, California USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: T-Rex - Back to the Cretaceous (IMAX) (DVD)

Picture if you will excited little me hunched in front of the TV set playing "T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous" on my DVD player. The film starts with a boring story of a neglected daughter whose dad is a paleontologist...oops, I nod off here for a while, then the story continues as I watch the time counter on the DVD ticking past 20 minutes, then 25 minutes and I'm thinking, "HEY! WHERE ARE THE FREAKING DINOSAURS, MAN?" Next I pick up a magazine...still waiting for DINOSAURS then HOLD ON! There's a couple of seconds of dino action then...THE CREDITS? This movie is a complete waste of time! There are probably about two minutes of dinosaur action tops among the boring, modern-day boring (did I say that already) incredibly boring story! .... This is really a total [disappointment].

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointment, April 5, 2002

By 

Wendy Somerlot Bittel (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: T-Rex - Back to the Cretaceous (IMAX) (DVD)

Stick to the Discovery Channel series on Dinosaurs and Prehistoric beasts. They are much more informational and done much better. This is a story about a girl's desire to please and impress her father rather than about dinosaurs. The actual segments with dinosaurs in them are fleeting. It attempts to make a point about proving and disproving theories but that gets a little lost in the story line and is never really clarified.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where are the Dinosours?, July 6, 2001

By 

Gary Vair (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: T-Rex - Back to the Cretaceous (IMAX) (DVD)

I suppose that a young girl's hallucinatory wanderings (after she gets a whiff of petrified dinosaur egg dust) was meant to be entertaining and informative. Her after hours ‘trip’ through a natural history museum trying to justify her T-REX laid eggs theory turns out to be just boring. Wow, look at all these plants. Whoa! Hey! We do actually get to see a couple (five or so) of the critters for a few minutes, and in their original 3D IMAX presentation they might have been quite startling leaping out at you from the screen. I wanted to know more about dinosaurs, not get 3D thrills which were confined to the original IMAX presentation. These dinosaurs don’t have much impact on the home video screen. The lone T-REX even turns out to be friendly enough to get a pat on the nose from our tripped out heroine. And wait! The petrified rock hatches! Now that’s really informative science for the kids, I’ve been around for 6 decades and even I had not known that petrified eggs could actually hatch (and of course the hatchling leaps out at you from the screen). Maybe I should get to the museum more often. I guess that might make 6 dinosaurs in the movie with two T-REXs.....