The Good Dinosaur

            So after the 20 years that Pixar has been making feature films, I recently payed homage to all of them in my recent review of all of them. Even with the worst of Pixar’s work, I can still find a good amount of enjoyment with them, with some form of satisfaction on my face. Now it’s only fitting I finish things out with their second film of the year, “The Good Dinosaur.”

Now before I get into this, let me first talk about this film’s troubling production history. Bob Peterson’s project about a dinosaur and a little boy had first been announced back in 2009, and two years later had its plot and title, “The Good Dinosaur,” fully announced. It was scheduled for a 2013 release, but it was pushed back to make room for the release of “Frozen.” So the film was set for release in 2014, but the film was delayed again in October of 2013. Why? Well, because Peterson was dealing with some harsh troubles with the story, not knowing where to end it, he was booted off of the project. This left us with no Pixar film to be released in 2014, thus the short film that was originally planned for it, “Monsters University: Party Monster” had to be put in front of “Muppets Most Wanted.” Afterwards, Peter Sohn was called up to take over and finish what Peterson started, and the film was then set to release on Thanksgiving of 2015. The teams were different, the cast was different, almost everything had to be changed up.

Now after such a long delay, after it finally was able to be finished, did “The Good Dinosaur” pay off? In my eyes, it did…to a certain degree.

In an alternate universe where the meteor that killed the dinosaurs misses, we are introduced to an Apatosaurus family that lives off of the land itself.  A strong willed father, a caring mother, a brute of an oldest boy, a playful and teasing daughter, and the runt of the litter, Arlo. Arlo lives most of his life as a coward, unable to do something great to earn a mark on the family silo. After his dad dies from a storm after forcing him to go after a critter he let escape, Arlo falls into the river and gets lost away from the family. His only hope now is to travel with the human boy, who he names “Spot,” all the while meeting colorful characters along the way.

The major highlight of this film is the animation, which looks tremendous, even for Pixar standards. Mother Nature’s beauty has never looked better in animated form, as the attention to detail was taken into extreme care, like a real live human could walk on screen and nothing would look out of place. With how long this movie was delayed for, they really did their best to make it look as gorgeous as possible. The designs of the characters really stick out too. While the Apatosaurus family does have a similar color scheme, they have very distinct features to them that makes them stand out, such as their jawlines and physique. Same goes for the rest of the dinosaurs in the film, such as the T-Rex family, each having different scars on their bodies. I also love some of the cool shots they get of the film, like when you have pterodactyls act as sharks in a cloudy sky. They also deliver some really good visual humor, such as Spot decapitating a giant bug and a scene where Arlo and Spot get high, which is the writer’s excuse to tell the animators, “Have fun with this scene.”

The voice acting in the film was good from most of the cast, with actors like Jeffery Wright, Frances MacDormand, Sam Elliot, and Anna Paquin doing a good job with what they’re given, but I think the film would have been stronger if it had been a silent film. Like I said, the visuals are astounding, and with how good they are, they could have easily done without any dialogue.

           

As for everything else, it’s good, but nothing groundbreaking. The story is stuff we’ve all heard before, of a low-life who gets taken from his home and becomes a stronger person along the journey, thus earning the respect he’s wanted. With the themes and elements you see, it’s kind of like an animated buddy road western, but with dinosaurs. It’s handled nicely, but nothing that makes it stand out. The weakest point of the film is probably the emotional draw that Pixar’s known for. While it was there at times, how it was put into the film felt forced, like it was something that they forgot to put into the film and added it in at the last minute. And with a story like this, you can see why.

With that said, does that make “The Good Dinosaur” a bad film? Absolutely not! What saves this film is the tremendous animation effort and bits of comic relief. The story and characters weren’t great, but they were still good. It may be one of Pixar’s weaker films, but that doesn’t make it a bad film. With all the production difficulties that this film had gone through, I’m glad that they were able to finish it and make it at least enjoyable. At the end of the day, it’s still a harmless film that I enjoyed and recommend people go and give it a watch.

Rating: 8/10