Due to a life-long fascination with paleontology, I’ve always felt compelled to watch any piece of media featuring dinosaurs. While this personal policy has resulted in several awful movie nights (I may never forgive Whoopi Goldberg for Theodore Rex), it’s also led me to underseen classics like The Valley of Gwangi and even that The Lost World miniseries starring Bob Hoskins. Naturally, this self-imposed obligation to dino flicks led me to Matt Drummond’s My Pet Dinosaur, a rose-colored throwback to the kid-befriends-creature films of yore.

My Pet Dinosaur stars Jordan Dulieu as Jake Emory, a young boy living in a small town apparently besieged by UFOs and secretive government experiments. After discovering a mysterious slimy substance with his friends, Jake accidentally brings a small reptilian creature to life, naming it Magnus. As his newfound friend begins to grow, Jake struggles to keep Magnus hidden from his troubled family and the military outfit attempting to cover up their nefarious activities.

Sharing in the nostalgic trend that we’ve been seeing a lot in current film and television, this simple premise is an obvious homage to 80s family films, borrowing elements from movies like ET: The Extraterrestrial and even The Goonies, then remixing them in a smartphone-generation-friendly package. While the idea is solid, My Pet Dinosaur ends up feeling almost like a parody of this genre instead of a good example of it. At times, it’s almost as if the filmmakers were simply going down a checklist of what’s expected in this sort of movie, rather than allowing the script to develop on its own terms.

In all honesty, there’s nothing particularly offensive about this film, as almost every aspect of the production was handled competently, and even the digital effects are surprisingly solid for a low-budget family picture (well, most of the time). However, it’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s some vital creative spark missing from nearly every scene, making this story seem way too familiar.

These questionable creative decisions are also coupled with a few production slip-ups, as the film is constantly trying to cover up the fact that it was produced by an Australian crew. The movie would actually have been a lot more interesting if it simply accepted the fact that it was set in Australia and incorporated that into the story somehow. There are also a few instances of awkward line delivery, but I don’t think it’s fair to expect Oscar-worthy performances from kids in a low-budget Australian dinosaur flick.

Surprisingly, this isn’t Drummond’s first dinosaur-themed outing, as he also wrote and directed Dinosaur Island back in 2014, a film with similar problems to this one, but which I ended enjoying quite a bit more. Curiously, though that movie was praised for its unique depiction of feathered dinosaurs, My Pet Dinosaur’s commitment to scientific accuracy is dubious at best with its fantasy-like designs.

I can’t truthfully claim that My Pet Dinosaur is an awful movie, but personally, I can’t quite get over its formulaic approach to storytelling. Some of the effects work can be impressive, and there are a few legitimately heartfelt moments and clever references sprinkled throughout the feature, but in the end, you’ve definitely seen this film before. Some younger viewers might be more willing to appreciate this movie, but if given the choice, I think they’d still prefer to re-watch ET on Netflix.

My Pet Dinosaur is available now on VOD!