The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Rated PG
Starring Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Frances McDormand, Steve Zahn, Anna Paquin, Sam Elliott
Directed by Peter Sohn
The Story:
Arlo (Ochoa) is a young dinosaur who gets separated from his family and tries to find the way home. Along the way he runs into a little orphan boy that he names Spot (Bright). The two fight and survive together as they bond on an earth that was spared an asteroid impact that caused dinosaur extinction.
Pixar.
The studio that for the longest time had the Midas touch.
Even their "worst films" were far and away better than any other studio could touch, viewers accepted them, flaws and all.
And then everyone else caught up, and in some instances, have surpassed Pixar for better looking, better feeling stories over the last few years.
So of course, when Inside Out came out, it was the triumphant return of the Pixar of old.
Then the fall came, and The Good Dinosaur premiered, and the bad Pixar of old reared its ugly head and reminded people of how bad some animated movies could be.
But before I tear this movie apart completely, let's just make one thing perfectly clear:
The backgrounds and scenery in this film is ay-may-zing. Gorgeously rendered, it looks sooooo real.
If only the rest of the movie were half that good or realistic...
As we watched this movie, it actually became more fun to laugh at it, because laughing with it was proving difficult.
The character designs were some of Pixar's worst. Their human looks okay, but their dinosaurs look buffoonish and cartoony, and totally out of place in the film.
They were aptly described as looking like characters from that Barnyard film a decade earlier.
Except that movie was funnier and had a much more interesting voice cast.
The voices in this film, save for Steve Zahn and Sam Elliott were boring and uninspired choices.
Plus, the movie seemed to not have anything original to say, but rather they had envisioned a series of "wouldn't it be funny if..." scenes and strung them together into a movie.
Wouldn't it be funny if Dinosaurs and Humans coexisted: The Flintstones.
We'll include a tragic father/son moment: The Lion King.
Then we'll have the dinosaur bond with the kid: Ice Age.
Oh, but how about we add a Western in there too! : City Slickers AND Back to the Future Part 3
To name but a few ideas that were borrowed, and basically made this audience want to watch any of those films instead.
Sadly, much like many of the reviews I write, I start out the review with a grade in my head. Then the more I think and type about the movie, that grade sometimes changes.
Sometimes for the better.
Often times, I get angry or disappointed in what I was offered as entertainment.
I think back to last year's Fantastic Four reboot. It was an okay film on its own, if it had renamed the characters and not called itself Fantastic Four. But it did, and it was downgraded because in the 8 years since the Marvel Cinematic Universe has propelled comic book movies into the forefront of entertainment, the bar is raised and to settle for less is just unacceptable at this stage.
So too is the dilemma for animated movies.
Pixar set the bar so high for everyone else, when movies fail to clear that bar, it's a trainwreck of mediocrity that cannot be tolerated. The problem is, now Pixar has found themselves failing to push the bar any higher, or missing their own bar completely.
Sure, not every movie is going to give you all 90 minutes filled with so much awesomeness you're begging to see it again and again. Remember, I hated the beginning of Inside Out and was about to eject it, or myself, and then it turned a corner and I was hooked.
But you should be happy that you at least saw it once.
The experience shouldn't be, "well I'm glad we got that one over with, and I hope to God to never see it again."
Or to tell the family member that missed the film and loves all animated film that she'd be better off not even bothering.
Final Grade:
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