2001 Yonggary |
  • South Korea • 1999 • 99m •    • Directed by: Hyung-rae Shim. • Starring: Dan Cashman, Bruce Cornwell, Dennis Howard, Matt Landers, Richard Livingston, Donna Philipson, Wiley M. Pickett, Brad Sergi, Eric Briant Wells, Harrison Young, D.J. Robbins, Derrick Costa, Johanna Parker. • Music by: Sung-woo Jo.      A team of scientists working on a remote dig site find the buried body of an enormous monster, perfectly preserved even after 200 million years. As soon as the beast is uncovered, however, an alien spacecraft suddenly appears above them and brings the monster back to life! The creature immediately sets about levelling the surrounding urban landscape and shrugging off the best firepower the military can throw at it. A lone scientist, working on decrypting an ancient set of hieroglyphics, may be on the verge of finding the aliens' weak point, but will it be too late?
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Regarding that acting, special notice has to go to Richard Livingston as Dr. Campbell. For a while, I thought his tendency to gaze off-camera while reciting his dialog was supposed to indicate that he had been hypnotized by the aliens, but apparently it's just the result of either amazing overacting, or an inability to remember his lines, making cue cards necessary. Fortunately, he gets squashed like a grape before this becomes really annoying. You have to wonder what other careers he tried before deciding that acting was where he really shines.
The rest of the cast is almost as laughable, with the possible exception of Harrison Young (Dr. Hughes), who's probably doing about all that can be done with the lines he was given. To be honest, he's probably the reason I sat through the movie anyway, as I spent the whole time trying to figure out where I'd seen him before (it turns out Young played the old version of Ryan at the end of "Saving Private Ryan) but I would have missed a real treat if I had changed the channel.
The effects are pretty bad, too; I thought maybe the monster was supposed to be glowing from radiation or something, but unless I missed some explanation, it's evidently just really cheap effects work. You have to wonder why the pilots attacking the monster didn't start shooting lower after watching him duck the first five or six missiles. Also why Captain Parker (Briant Wells) thinks his machine gun and jet pack will do anything to Yong Gary that fighter jets have not.
Just when the futile attacks start to get tedious, though, the giant dinosaur gets a lobotomy, breaking the aliens' control over him. Of course, that just means you need a new monster, and the alien attackers quickly send a new one so we can have a battle royale between Gary and the new one. Considering that in the end our new buddy Yong Gary is carted off to storage on a deserted island somewhere, it's amazing that there has never been a sequel made (I mean, c'mon, we're up to "Saw VI" already.) Certainly this is not a serious movie; it's not even a good movie. But at 2:00 in the morning (the only time you're likely to find it being shown) it's pretty entertaining, if not in the way its producers intended. "Reptilian" is one that will be appreciated by any aficionado of bad sci-fi.
Review by NavyOrion from the Internet Movie Database.
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