HOT AND SWEATY REX

Forget the Hatfields and the McCoys, the Gambinos, the Colombos, the Genoveses. The Velociraptors are battling the Hadrosaurs for control of Miami.

Anyone who thinks dinosaurs died out has been fooled by their human-emulating latex disguises. Deep down, Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts are just like p.i. Vincent Rubio, a walking, talking descendant of ages past. Vincent, a raptor suffering herb-addiction withdrawal, has been paid twenty large by Frank Tallarico, head of the LA Raptor Mafia, to tail Nelly Hagstrom, a Miami Hadrosaurs fighting Frank’s younger, meaner, dumber brother Eddie for supremacy in South Florida. Vincent’s long-time pal Glenda comes along to help, but she can’t do much when Jack Dugan, Nelly’s boss and Vincent’s boyhood friend sidelined to a wheelchair by degenerative muscle disease, is gunned down; when a batch of pretty Ornithos lose their tails; when dissolving powder attacks a dino/horse who throws a race; when Nelly is left to drown as a hurricane looms; when Noreen, Jack’s sister Vincent mistakenly jilted back in his herb-orgy days, has to decide whether Vincent should live or die. The streets (not to mention the Everglades) are littered with bodies of rival dinosaurs as Vincent plays all sides against each other, has a minor herb relapse, and finally ends a friendship to end the strife.

Garcia (Casual Rex, 2001, etc.) is brutally funny, paying wacky homage to noir conventions while spoofing mafiosi loyalties, AA principles, race relations, and double-agent double-dealings.