Professor Neweyes uses a magical radio and helms a gigantic ship. In real life, Walter Cronkite was a devoted ham radio operator (callsign KB2GSD) and an avid sailor.
Adaptation Expansion: Based very loosely on a children’s book by Hudson Talbot. Half of the dinosaur characters are dropped with more human characters added as well as an antagonist and loads and loads of side-plots.
It is well worth it to hunt around for Talbott's sequel book, Going Hollywood. The story has Rex and pals go to Hollywood to have their life story made into a movie. Much They Just Didn't Care-larity ensues. One can't help but wonder...
Baleful Polymorph: This happens to Louie and Cecilia when Professor Screweyes, having put them under his spell with his screw eye, demonstrates the power of his evil pills to the dinosaurs by giving one to the kids, turning them into monkeys.
Bowel Breaking Bricks: Elsa is so embarrassed that she "lays an egg". This is made all the stranger when "Laying an egg" is used as a term of romantic endearment.
Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: A mild example pops up when Louie meets Cecilia because you don't expect to hear this line in an animated kids movie and it's said so casually:
Louie: Come on, big eyes you're killing me. What's the matter?
Cecilia: It's Thanksgiving.
Louie: So? What's there to cry about? You don't like turkey?
Cecilia: No, it's my parents.
Louie: What about your parents? Do they beat you?
Broken Aesop: The "family is important" moral wrapped around the movie isn't actually supported by Rex's story at all and seems tacked on because we hadn't learned anything yet.
Not so much broken aesop as, well, yet another BLAM.
Carnivore Confusion: A very strange variant. Predation is frowned upon, but Brain Grain Cereal apparently teaches a herbivorous Triceratops to eat HOT DOGS.
Tofu, we hope. One line of dialogue could have reassured us here.
There are some deeply Unfortunate Implications here. Professor Neweyes tells us that Brain Grain has essentially caused world peace in his home time, since living things that eat it will no longer harm each-other at all. Given that Brain Grain also turns Rex into what amounts to a Barney rip-off, and without it, he's a vicious slavering murderbeast... well, see What Measure Is a Non-Cute? below.
This was actually explained pretty well in a highly rated youtube comment on the scene: "In a deleted scene he goes into great detail about how his worst fear is crows, and that's why he uses them in his act. This way, the crows are under his control. Also, his job at the circus is to frighten other people, showing how he even controls fear itself! But then, the circus is shut down. The people leave. Even the acts leave, excluding the crows. Suddenly, he realizes he is just a lonely and frightened man, with no real control, and he is consumed by his own fears."
Deus ex Machina: Convenient timing helps when you have an actual Time Machine. But then again, couldn't he have arrived before the heroes got trapped in the evil circus?
Devolution Device: Screweyes' Brain Drain pills, which he uses to briefly transform the kids into chimpanzees and revert the dinosaurs to their pre-Brain Grain forms. Which are violent and monstrous. Huh.
The Dog Bites Back: The crows who are present whenever Prof. Screweyes appears in the movie circus seems to dislike him for some reasons: so when he's left alone they took the chance to eat him alive.
Evil Eye: Professor Screweyes' Screw Eye. It is able to hypnotize people (*cough*), despite the fact that it's only a screw thrust in his eyesocket. The backstory of the "eye" is what makes everything so disturbing; take a look at Eye Scream below.
Eye Scream: In the cut scene where Prof. Screweyes explains why he became a villain he tells in disturbing detail of how a berry fell into his left eye and a hungry crow pecked the eye out when trying to obtain it.
Evil Twin: Actually, just an ordinary brother, not a twin brother.
They never mentioned if they were twins or not... they certainly looked a lot alike, if you leave the screw eye and all that aside...
Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: According to most of the kids, it would be. On the other hand, the fact that some kids and virtually all adults are scared by the idea of actual dinosaurs running about is why Screweyes wants to get his hands on the heroes. That said, when he does get his hands on the protagonists and turns them mean with his evil pills, they don't rampage so much as sit there and look angry.
Only because they're chained, though... one can only imagine what would have happened if they had escaped the circus...
Just Eat Him: One of the dinosaurs did consider doing this to Screweyes, until he brought up the fact that since the dinosaurs are smarter now, they should act civil. Later, when they aren't so civil, Rex was this close to eating Screweyes, but much to the dismay of a couple of people, The Power of Love prevents him from doing so.
Knight of Cerebus: After Screweyes and his Circusof Fear shows up the movie takes on a decidedly darker turn. The villain is genuinely charismatic and the goofy dinosaurs are no longer funny, even before he turns them monstrous. While it is in no way an appropriate direction for this silly kid's film to take, for older viewers who are into weird animation, it's the best part of the movie — but it is also short (even shorter without the deleted scenes).
My Beloved Smother: Louie claims his mother is this trope as his reason for running away, but to hear him describe it, it sounds more like he's just massively insecure in his own masculinity.
Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer gave the impression that Screweye's role as the "Master of Fear" would have been more prominent and that the dinosaurs only appeared monstrous during his act as the result of his machine. Screweyes is only in the movie during the last 25 minutes or so and is more of a pathetic, ineffectual villain, and the dinosaurs actually turned evil as the result of his pills.
No Export for You: This has the (dis)honour of being the only movie in recent memory with Spielberg's name on the credits to go Direct-to-Video in Britain.
Parental Abandonment: Cecilia's parents are never around, and don't even take her on vacation with them. In contrast, Louie is the one abandoning his parents, as apparently he was embarrassed of his mother showering him with affection at every opportunity.
The Power of Love: Can turn ferocious, monstrous dinosaurs into cuddly, dorky dinosaurs.
Somewhere, a Palaeontologist is Crying: If for no other reason than the implication that dinosaurs aren't appealing to kids unless they're turned into cuddly goofballs.
Small potatoes in comparison, but pterosaurs aren't freakin' dinosaurs. It doesn't help that Elsa looks nothing like a pteronodon.
Woog and Dweeb, a Triceratops and Parasaurolophus respectively, are both seen eating hotdogs.
Then again, Triceratops might had been an omnivore, and herbivorous animals do occasionally eat meat (although having a diet like Woog's and Dweeb's would certainly be unhealthy).
Rex has three functional fingers in each hand, despite T-Rex having only two in real life.
Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Especially at the beginning of the movie, where Buster the bird is quite accepting of the fact that Rex is playing golf in front of his tree.
Trouser Space: Stubbs pulls this stunt near the end of the film. The best part is he gets the laughter he had so much sought while giving Professor Screweyes his I Quit Speech
Uplifted Animal: Neweyes can do this, Screweyes can do it backwards.
What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: And it is wikkid Anvilicious about this too. The dinosaurs are turned into BarneyExpies when they're "tamed". Once Professor Screweyes gets a hold of them, they turn ferocious and terrifying... but Rex's "normal" form in the beginning is ridiculously monstrous already.
Let's not even get into the irony that comes from the fact that when they become intelligent, they wind up looking, well, really dumb. In their feral forms, they look more clever and respectable than they do as Happy Meal toys. Huh?
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: According to a deleted scene, Screweyes got his eye violently pecked off by a corvid as a kid, which started his spiral into nihilism.
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