For many people, a familiar pastime in the weeks leading up to major winter holidays is gathering with family members and watching holiday movies, be they in a theater or on television. During the month of December, the Falls Free Press will return to our tradition of “The 12 Films of Christmas,” focusing on new holiday movies for the year 2024—a year that can still do with plenty of peace and joy. We will review each film, whether naughty or nice, and let you know where to watch.
For Christmas Day this year I will be diverting from the new movie rule of “the 12 Films of Christmas,” instead reviewing a rarer, more forgotten, possibly unknown holiday treasure. In 1993 Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park premiered in theaters, going on to gross over $914 million worldwide. Five months later a more family friendly version, the animated film We’re Back, premiered, and while not as successful, proved that love of dinosaurs was in the air. Aiming to capitalize on this fad, especially with Jurassic Park debuting just a month prior, Japanese director Haruki Kadokawa chose to make another family dinosaur film, Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story, which would gross ¥2.2 billion (Over $14 billion today) and cost only a third of Spielberg’s film, though still the highest-budget Japanese film at the time.
Rex tells the story of 10-year-old Chie (played by Yumi Adachi), who with her paleontologist father, finds an unhatched dinosaur egg dating back to the Jōmon period surviving inside a crystal in a mysterious cave. To her surprise she can hear the baby inside, and decides to look after it as scientists do experiments to help it hatch. Meanwhile, her mother, an embryologist who recently abandoned her family and moved to New York, has been requested to return and help with the egg studies, something that even Chie soon has issues with, seeing that her mother may not be the dream person she had imagined.
When the egg hatches, an adorable baby Tyrannosaurus rex appears, created for the film by Carlo Rambaldi, the special effects artist from E.T. The dino, Rex, immediately imprints on Chie who has chosen to be its mother. Nervous as he is, Rex becomes famous, starring in television commercials, becoming toys, and all around the face of the paleontology center. Meanwhile, Chie works hard to help Rex grow, teaching him to eat, poop, and learn commands, work she had already achieved raising her family’s Golden Retriever and horse. Problems occur though when Rex becomes overworked and begins to miss his birth mother, spending most of his time hiding in the museum under a full-scale Tyrannosaurus model.
Of course, the film isn’t all loving parentage. When a group of men arrive to take Rex away to a soon-to-be-built museum focused on him, Chie and Rex escape to the city where they are pursued by the museum associates through constant comedic slapstick moments involving a restaurant, toy store, snowmobiles, a hot air balloon, and even an enchanting dance to the Christmas carols being sung at a nearby church. The entire second half of the film would be very reminiscent of Jingle All the Way if not for the fact that it wouldn’t be made for another three years. The trip concludes with an extremely emotional reunion with Chie’s family as they return to the mysterious cave temple.
Despite its over-budget earnings, Rex was barely in theaters in Japan for two months before being pulled from screens over controversy. Writer and director Haruki Kadokawa would be charged with supplying money to his ade, Takeshi Ikeda, in order to smuggle cocaine from Los Angeles back to Tokyo. Ikeda was arrested at the airport shortly after the film’s premiere after being caught smuggling 80 grams of cocaine, which the police believed was for his own personal use as well as Kadokawa. As a result not only was the film pulled, but every last promotional material, including at the production office, was removed.
It may not have been released at Christmas time, nor even marketed as a holiday film, but the very essence of the story and setting are simply that. Chie and Rex’s journey into town encompasses the entire second half of the film, taking place during Christmas festivities, with not only extras wearing masks of Rex (which had already been made to sell as promotion for the movie), but different traditional events occurring as if the duo were simply guests in town and not running from hit men. Based on promotional posters, it’s not hard to see that had the film continued performing well in theaters, it would certainly have been released during that December in the United States, though more than likely dubbed in English.
Rex incites all emotions, from laughter to heart-breaking tears, and is a reminder that family doesn’t have to live near you, nor does it have to be human, and no matter how many miles or billions of years you’re separated from each other, the story can always have a happy ending.
Rex: A Dinosaur Story can be found on the Internet Archive.
