Just what I expected

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This movie is still brilliant. It has a cracking start. Lord Southmere, desperate to preserve a secret formula, flees from the Chinese gang - in the Natural History Museum - among dinosaur skeletons. He takes refuge in a pram (donning a baby's bonnet), but this is not enough to fool the dastardly villains. But before they drag him away he has time to tell his old nanny (Helen Hayes) where the formula is hidden - somewhere on the diplodocus. She, Joan Sims and a gang of other nannies pursue the Chinese and eventually kidnap the dinosaur (now on the back of a steam powered truck). There is a great comedy chase through London and the English countryside. Great British character actors pop up to perform cameos (Joan Hickson, Derek Guyler, Geoffrey Pearson, Jane Lapotaire, Hugh Laurie). I agree with other commenters that the portrayal of the Chinese is just pantomimic (and a parody of Charlie Chan movies et al). Peter Ustinov was British, but not English: he was Russian, French and Ethiopian. (Peter Lorre, who played a Japanese detective, was Hungarian-Jewish. Other orientals have been played by Nils Asther (Swedish) and Warner Oland (Swedish).) Peter Ustinov is brilliant in this movie.

It is not necessary to give a synopsis of one of the worst movies ever made. There are good reviews of this movie available online. I just want to add that as a young teen of about 13 years I went to see this movie with a friend and his father. The movie was double-billed with a Disney classic, Cinderella, which ran first in order to draw an audience. One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing began and the audience just kind of slowly filtered out of the theater. Our group was one of the last to leave, and the theater was probably empty before half-an-hour of the movie was through. Don't buy the DVD unless you are a collector. So the next time Disney announced the opening of its "Golden Vault" the video of this stinker better stay right where it is: collecting dust on a shelf.

This was one of the most memorable films of my childhood, and I hadn't seen it since it came out in the cinema in England when I was seven years old, until I was given a DVD of it again today, thirty-one years later. Although today it didn't have me rolling in the aisles or have me doing Peter Ustinov impressions for hours afterward like it did back then, it still was a charmer, and it was simply just fun to watch. It deliberately encapsulates a bit of the paradoxically innocent yet bigoted flavor of England back in those times, and there are many little delicate touches for those with an appreciation for the idiosyncrasies of the English. Peter Ustinov is perfectly cast to be given license to run amok with his non-politically-correct character, considering he was one of the most well-read, culturally-sensitive intellectuals of his generation. (Check out HIS Bio!) It's certainly all about him. Overacting? I'd say "playing it broad" instead, and yet with real skill. Ustinov was a master raconteur on many subjects: political, cultural, and musical, and his comedic timing was also very acute. I think it shows. Is this film racist? Well, it certainly couldn't have been produced by Walt Disney in today's social climate, but I'd say rather that it is really a grand romp in satire, made at a time when we could more easily laugh at ourselves and each other, and forgive a little easier too. Sure it's completely "wrong" that the Chinese guys are actually played by Europeans in make-up. But the very joke lies in just how much a parody this "Chinese" make-up actually is, and how no-one is remotely intended to be fooled. Paraphrasing lines of Ustinov's (Chinese) character explains this perfectly: "How can you tell Europeans apart? They all look the same...those eyes." The film left me with the wistful feeling and hope that here was the England and these were the kinds of adventures that we had when we were children. (How dearly I would still love to run around with a squad of Great British Nannies or Chinese Agents looking for a microfilm on the Diplodocus in the Natural History Museum.) It's a wonderful time to look back to, even if it probably only ever existed in imagination. Sadly, the once-free-to-wander-in- during-our-summer-holidays Natural History Museum now charges a hefty admission fee. And that's a fact.

Silly, disappointing Disney outing, hampered mostly by Ustinov's terrible performance. As Hercule Poirot, Ustinov has always been superb, but here he overacts embarrassingly; the same year (1976), Peter Sellers also played an inept Oriental guy for laughs, in "Murder By Death", and he was much more efficient. Besides, the film has no coherency, and the story is hopelessly uninteresting. Frankly, I can't think of one person (of any age) that will find himself caring about what will happen here.