Notes: New Line Cinema. 92 minutes.
Katie Coltrane: Whoopi Goldberg
Voice of Teddy Rex: George Newburn
Voice of Molly Rex: Carol Kane
Elizar Kane: Armin Mueller-Stahl
Commissioner Lynch: Richard Roundtree
Also starring Juliet Landau, Bud Cort (of Harold and Maude).

Executive Producer: Stefano Ferrari
Produced: Richard Abramson, Sue Baden-Powell
Written and Directed: Jonathan Betuel
Dinosaurs by Criswell Productions.

Summary: Billionaire DNA researcher Elizar Kane plans to destroy this futuristic world and launch a New Eden missile which will serve as a Noah's Ark for the frozen creatures he has stored. Two of his workers, a "softskin" (human) and a dinosaur (Kane has brought them back) intend to blab and are killed.

Teddy Rex aspires to be a detective while Katie Coltrane busts crooks "out in the [urban] jungle.". The human corpse has no identification and the dinosaur corpse is mourned by Teddy: "It's kind of like we feel for each other." Coltrane rescues a dog and is set up by a kid, Sebastian, with his father. Teddy goes to a high-class party to talk to the Commissioner. He asks a waiter, "So what do we have, Frenchy? Meat, meat, meat and meat. You know I'm a recovering carnivore." The politics of "interspecies relations" prompts the Commissioner to appoint Teddy a detective to investigate the "dinocide," and to team him with Coltrane.

After some driving slapstick, the two visit the Natural History Museum where Teddy waxes sentimental about his ancestors: "If dinosaurs weren't extinct, we'd be running the world." Autopsy details lead to Molly Rex at a nightclub where they serve hydroponic seaweed. Coltrane remarks, "I thought you people eat meat." Teddy's "kind of on the wagon," and complains that the only time softskins pay attention to animals is to "shoot them, eat them, or wear them." Molly sings "I'm No Angel" and the two inquire about the late Oliver. Teddy is smitten ("glando").

Another autopsist says "we're all slaves to our DNA" and connects the human clone corpse with Kane. Coltrane and Teddy stop to see Sebastian and his hockey team and Teddy wins praise. The two go to Kane's lab, "where I was cloned" Teddy waxes nostalgic. Kane shows them icefish which can be thawed back alive but claims to know noting about the murders. Meanwhile Sebastian is kidnapped and Oliver's funeral shows his recycling into liquification to fertilize flowers which the mourners take home--he's recycled. Kane promises a better world.

Teddy escorts Molly to his apartment where they dance. He and Coltrane must go question "The Toymaker" who crafted a deadly butterfly which was the instrument of death. He confesses about Kane when Teddy threatens to eat him. Molly is kidnapped too now.

Various henchment are shot and Kane reveals to Teddy his "survival of the fittest" scheme to be the new god and create an ice age. Molly and Teddy are to be a pair on the Ark. Katie is shot into a paralysis and refuses to give Teddy a gun: "use your brain." He stops the evil plot and is afterwards honored by being made Detective First Class by the Commissioner, who delivers a speech involving "interspecies" sanctimony.

Commentary: There have been more obnoxious dinosaur movies for kids than this one, but sitting through this film was alleviated only by Bud Cort and the occasional albeit waffling meat commentary.

Noah's Ark is a frighteningly ubiquitous theme in the mid- and late-'90s, appearing on all manner of merchandise, and this movie uses the idea as a way of combining futurism, cataclysm, and dinosaurs (with the damned Jurassic DNA crap thrown in obligatorily). One can detect this post-apocalyptic/saurian pattern in many 1950s and 1980s incarnations.