1975 - ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING, a not unfunny Disney comedy

I actually laughed at a lot of the comedic scenes in this late period Disney comedy.  The Disney company kept chugging along with live action comedies after the death of Walt Disney.  For every Treasure Island or Pollyanna audiences had to endure films like The Boatnicks, Snowball Express or The Cat from Outer Space.

One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing kind of falls in the middle.  It's silly and stupid at times but it does have some undeniably humorous stuff.  The so called plot of this film has a group of Chinese spies chasing a British spy who has a microfilm of a secret formula called "Lotus X" which the Chinese agents want back.  Little do these martial arts wielding Asians realize is that they have to deal with some English nannies out to stop them.

Well the cast is shall we say interesting and not exactly P.C.  Peter Ustinov is the leader of the Chinese and sports an absurd accent and dresses like a poor man's Fu Manchu.  Helen Hayes usually referred to as "The First Lady of the American Theater," plays the leader of the British nannies out to stop him. Hayes, wrapped up her long career performing in mediocre Disney comedies and crappy TV shows probably to pad her retirement account.  In fact a lot of British character actors show up in this film.

 

Bill Walsh was the producer and the writer of this film, Walsh was a mainstay at the Disney Studios for many years and was responsible for the better Disney family films like The Love Bug, Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks to name a few.  The director was Robert Stevenson who had been working since the 1930's and moved over to the Disney organization in 1957 and really seemed to jell with their kind of film.  Stevenson made a lot of popular and commercially successful films for Disney.

 

I have to mention a couple of amusing scenes in this film.  The chase through London with the dinosaur skeleton is darn funny and the final battle between the nannies and the Chinese martial artists is funny slapstick.  Overall One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing is a good comedy in an ocean of really bad Disney comedies.

The running time is 100 minutes.