One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Today's young people may be surprised to learn that, in the 1970s, it was still considered fine to cast pale people of European descent or origin as Asians! Then again, they may not be surprised, given the whitewashing that is still occurring on TV shows and in movies in 2017! (Whitewashing is the current term for the changing of people-of-colour characters into pale-skinned characters of European origin or descent.)I loved this movie as a young child back in the 70's, when I was ignorant as to what Chinese people looked and sounded like. (Where I lived as a young child, there were people of Eastern European descent, Indian descent, Japanese descent, Thai descent, and Western European descent; I didn't encounter anyone of Chinese descent or origin, until later in my childhood.)I saw this movie with my mother. She's quite racist, and so did not explain to me that those were not actual Chinese /of Chinese descent people in the main "Chinese" roles.A number of the user reviews for this movie, here on IMDb, do a great job of demonstrating inherent bigotry. Their ingrained prejudice causes them to deny the reality of this movie, which is that OF COURSE the casting of Peter Ustinov and Bernard Bresslaw as Chinese characters is racist! (Contrary to what one particular reviewer wrote, it is NOT the same as a Chinese actor putting on a Texan accent! There ARE Texans of Chinese origin or descent, in real life.)This movie is arguably even more racist than the patently racist Charlie Chan movies, as One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing's "Chinese" characters are caricatures written and portrayed for "comedic" effect.(BTW, in the summary of this review, I said "another movie", because, sadly, there's a lot of them :-( For example, I saw Disney's Song of the South, when it was given a theatrical re- release, when I was a young child. When I watched the movie, I had no idea that many of the characters were slaves! I thought that they were paid workers. No-one, especially not my racist mother, had ever told me about the despicable history of U.S. slavery, and early- to- mid 1970's dramatic TV shows, which I watched at FAR too young of an age, tended to have "white slavery" plots, featuring, of course, evil "foreigners", if they ever mentioned slavery at all. It wasn't until the 1977 original broadcast of the amazing miniseries Roots, again watched by me at far too young of an age, that I knew anything about slavery having existed in the United States.)

Pursued by a group of fiendish Orientals, secret agent Lord Edward Southmere conceals the secret formula for Lotus X on a dinosaur skeleton. By coincidence he meets his old nanny in the museum and is able to blurt out a plea for help before he is taken away by the fiendish Orientals. The nannies sneak into the museum to search the dinosaur for the formula that is hidden there but are interrupted and abandon their search. With the fiendish Orientals holding Southmere, Hettie knows she is running out of time and has only one option – to steal the dinosaur before the fiendish Orientals can get it.With the unusual title and the memorable scenes featuring a dinosaur skeleton chasing around London I can recall elements of this from childhood but decided to watch it again before I tried to write down my thoughts on it. So it was that I sat down to a fairly amusing but inconsequential mess of a comedy. The plot is messy of course but at least it has the good taste never to take itself seriously and instead just keeps the silly slapstick action moving along. Sadly it is not witty enough to play that well to an adult audience but rather relies on slightly older children getting into the silly jokes, pratfalls and stereotypes. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy some parts of it but it never did it consistently or even half the time.The cast help a little bit but they have little to work with other than stereotypes. Following Mary Poppins, the English Nanny is put up centre stage and played reasonably well by Hayes and Sims but they seem dull compared to a performance from Peter Ustinov that is so off the wall and weird that it is worth seeing. Of course it would be impossible for someone to give the same performance today because, rightly, it is a piece of absurd stereotype to the point where I felt I should apologise to every Orential person I knew just for the sin of enjoying it. It is very close to being offensive but it is so silly that I couldn't help but enjoy it – far from his finest hour of course but fun at least. The support cast are all average, matching the tone of the film but I was entertained by the presence of several recognisable faces, including Ackland, Guyler and a few others. Nimmo is very British and good value but, as in many of the Carry On films, Bresslaw is just a big brute with little to do.Overall, an enjoyably silly film for older children but with little in it for adults. The narrative is no more than silly action and Ustinov's performance will (like Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean) either offend you or make you enjoy the film a lot more than you would without it. For me he was the main event and without him this would have just been too silly to enjoy.

This is possibly the best film ever. The story of a group of British nannies and a captured spy and their conflicts with the Chinese secret service over the recipe for the mysterious "lotus x" produces a miraculously silly slapstick festival of idiocy that is probably the most watchable film ever to come from Britain. Forget the grossly overrrated "The Full Monty" - One Of Our Dinosaurs is Missing is the funniest film ever to escape our sceptered isle. Of course the British actors playing Chinese characters are unconvincing, but this isn't about realism or diplomacy; it's about non-stop tomfoolery, which it supplies in bucketloads. This is what British films should be about! Not dark, brooding council estates; tower-blocks filled with the destitute; or the collapse of industry; instead, the power of self-belief and good honest values overcoming adversity. An absolute film classic, sadly overlooked at the Oscars, this deserves a cinema re-release at some point. Failing that, buy the video - you won't regret it!

And it's in my top ten best films. Hilarious from the very start, with Lord Southmere hitching a lift from the yeti ("Thanks for the lift old boy - I don't think you're abominable at all!") and then escaping from the villains in the Natural History Museum disguised as a baby. It may be racist in the same way as Carry on Up the Khyber (most of the Chinese are occidentals in terrible eye makeup) but it's certainly feminist, celebrating the power of women in grey stockings fuelled only by nice cups of tea. (What if this great beast should fall on us, Hetty? Then we would be the first people in two million years to be killed by a dinosaur!) xxxxxx