Review: Attack of the T-Rex is packed with flashy Hot Wheels action and laughs

I've always been really into movies and TV and all the rest, and that love even extended to the way I played with my toys as a kid. I had tons of action figures, LEGO sets, and stuffed animals, and I used to play with them in different combinations, imagining they were the stars of various TV shows on my own channel, which I called C! TV. The longest-running of these was The LEGO Show, which starred a huge cast of characters including Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (my first celebrity obsession) and ran for multiple years. It was pretty good stuff.

Watching Hot Wheels Let's Race: Attack of the T-Rex really took me back to those days. This peppy, colorful little adventure (which is streaming on Netflix) has the energy of a kid who's making it up as they go, throwing all kinds of wild twists and turns into a story that is mostly sugar-infused nonsense, but is a lot of fun all the same. 

A spin-off of the Hot Wheels Let's Race TV show, this 45-minute special doesn't waste much time throwing viewers into the world. Surely, there's an expectation that most of the people tuning in for this are kids who are already fans of the show, rather than thirty-something newcomers venturing into the world for the first time. Fair. But there's a quick introduction of Coop and his friends, before said friends leave Hot Wheels City behind. Summer is over, so they have to get back to real life, I guess, leaving Coop and his robot sidekick behind.

You see, Coop has just been put in charge of the Hot Wheels Ultimate Garage, which is very much what it sounds like: a super-futuristic facility full of amazing cars. When the characters in this movie want to go for a drive, they hold up a steering wheel device and name the car they want to pick. It feels vaguely Pokémon-like, while the overall energy of the movie is more like Paw Patrol, but with a focus on cars rather than dogs. Coop is excited for his new role, but also understandably nervous. He's just a kid, after all, and all of the other people who have kept watch over the garage have been adults, all of whom brought exciting new innovations to the world of Hot Wheels.

Soon enough, trouble strikes in the form of giant monsters, including the T-Rex mentioned in the title. In a very funny sequence, there's a flashback to prehistoric times (the year 1968), during which a cave kid used the first Hot Wheels vehicle to defeat the T-Rex, locking him away underground. But now, he's back, and so Coop has to save the day. He teams up with Cruise, the green-haired daughter of an evil scientist (presumably from the series). She's a lot of fun, because all of this heroic adventuring is new to her. She makes her first friend, gives her first pep talk, etc., delighted at every new good thing she does. She and Coop have a fun dynamic, a strong unlikely duo to put in the middle of all the action.

And the action is a lot of fun. You might think there's only so much they can do with kids driving cars around tracks, and that's kind of true, but there are some nifty gadgets and twists along the way. One such gizmo is the track blasters, which shoot out track ahead of the car, allowing the driver to make their own road as they go. There's also a launch tower where cars get shot out like missiles. One car makes a big fart (since, yeah, this is for kids). The innovation is pretty impressive.

While most adults probably won't get much out of this, I have to think it's the kind of thing that will blow a lot of kids' minds. It's funny, zippy, and packed with action. It made me feel like a kid again, which is exactly what you want from a movie based on toy cars. Team Step On It forever!