With rubber dinosaur costumes that barely conceal the zippers and seams, the phony look of the creatures in this Disney fiasco make earlier dinosaurs on screen look like Spielberg creations. It's a complete "E.T." rip-off that probably had Spielberg biding his time on his own dinosaur film after this flew in and tanked, showing "how not to" make a movie. Black and White characterizations feature two leads far too good (William Katt, adequate; Sean Young, not even passable) and the major bad guy (Patrick McGoohan) written like a serial villain.
Rumors of large dinosaur size creatures make the rounds of the three scientists, and they head to Africa with different motivations. By chance, Katt and Young find the dinosaur family first, but when McGoohan and his bad men step in, it's an apparent demise for the dino parents and up to our bland heroes to protect the cute little rubber baby buggy bumper from harm.
Overloaded with silly scenes mixed with violent montages, this is a film that doesn't quite know what kind of mood it wants to be. Close-ups of the baby dinosaur makes its body just look more and more ridiculous. Baby dino gets into all sorts of scrapes, interrupting romantic moments between the two and even getting his head caught in Katt's underwear. The acting isn't at all interesting, and that's a matter not only of the lack of Chemistry Between the two leads but the leading ladies gland performance and the horrible script they are given to speak.
The pacing is often quite slow, and the set seems rather forced with its greeny foliage too perfectly set up. All this really has going for it is an interesting score by veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith, a few pretty moments in the jungle photography and some scattered laughs that had me grumbling at myself for laughing at the juvenile nature of them. It is more than obvious from the start what will happen, and unfortunately I, it doesn't come soon enough. Stick with the first two "Jurassic Park" films, or seek out the first two versions of "The Lost World", or even 1960's "Dinosaurus" which at least had charm.
Review by mark.waltz from the Internet Movie Database.