First off, let it be known that I had a bias going into the theater. I love Pixar more than any other animation or movie-making organization in the world. I can list off every Pixar movie, in order, because I have been watching them all since I was a baby. I still have a box filled with every “Toy Story 2” McDonalds toy in the basement that my parents lovingly helped me collect when I was a toddler.
Pixar has created some of the best family films ever put to the screen, managing to appeal to both children and adults through clever writing and stellar animation. We probably wouldn’t even have computer generated animated movies if “Toy Story” wasn’t such a masterpiece, paving the way for a new art form in cinema.
All of that is why “The Good Dinosaur,” Pixar’s second film this year, directed by Peter Sohn, left me feeling so disappointed. Even without the lofty standards Pixar set for itself, the choppy story and uneven tone in conjunction with baffling decisions in the film’s aesthetic did not leave much of an impression on me.
The story is one of the oddest premises yet: What if the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs just missed? Pixar suggests that the dinosaurs would become the new dominant species, learning to speak and farm and herd cattle. The plot follows Arlo, voiced by Raymond Ochoa, an anxious little dinosaur living on a farm with his farmer parents Poppa and Momma, played by Jeffrey Wright and Frances McDormand, and two siblings Buck and Libby, played by Marcus Scribner and Maleah Nipay-Padilla. Arlo botches one of his chores when he is meant to take out a critter that was stealing their food, and Poppa takes him out in the middle of a storm to chase it. Tragedy strikes when the river floods, Arlo gets separated from his family, and gets stuck working with a little human, whom he names Spot, to get back home.
Let me start with what is easily the best part of the film: the animation. My god, is this a pretty movie. The sweeping landscapes of this alternate Earth are breathtaking, with mountains and plains seemingly going on forever. Water flows more realistically than any other animated movie I’ve ever seen, and I swear you can see every single speck of dirt on the riverbank during a tender nighttime scene with Arlo and Spot.
But then you see the dinosaurs, and their designs seem to be made for an entirely different movie. Arlo and his Apatosaurus family are bright green, with big cartoony eyes and squishy animation. The cowboy Tyrannosaurus rexes that Arlo and Spot meet later on are the cutest interpretations of the creature I’ve ever seen. This would be fine, if the backgrounds and surroundings weren’t so jarringly realistic. It took me out of the film to see a goofy green cartoon running through a flock of photorealistic birds as the camera sweeps around in one epic shot.
The character design choice is the first of many weird aspects of the film that I’m going to attribute to production problems. This poor film went through two directors, a nearly full rewrite, a recasting of all the voice actors except for McDormand as Momma, and over two years of delay from when it was intended to release. I hate to say it, but the hasty production shows.
The plot has awkward pacing, with Arlo and Spot spending too much time in certain moments and glancing over other moments that should be explored further. Nearly the first third of the film is spent back on the farm with the family, but Libby and Buck don’t get any screentime after the aforementioned tragedy strikes. I won’t spoil exactly what happens, but it reminded me almost shot-for-shot of Mufasa and the wildebeests in “The Lion King.”
Another scene later in the film involving Spot leaving Arlo also makes no sense, and it makes me think they had to delete a scene or rewrite a part of the script and forgot to set up why Arlo would act as he does. Arlo also has a bad habit of speaking where an explanation isn’t necessary, which takes away from the beautiful animation and instead highlights the clichéd story and the typical points of character development, especially in the end. It came off as sloppy, which sucks because Pixar should never be sloppy.
That is not to say that every scene fails. There are some moments with just Arlo and Spot that work tremendously, like a hilarious drug trip caused by eating rotten fruit or an entertaining encounter with a crazy dinosaur and his army of adorable animals. But by far the best moment in the film, in animation and story, was on the riverbed late at night, when Arlo and Spot are sharing a moment about family. This scene holds up with the best Pixar moments, and it’s frustrating that the rest of the film is so uneven.
The final aspect of the film I’ll touch on is the music. I usually love Pixar’s music, I have a CD of songs from “Toy Story” to “Up,” and I believe that every film has at least one song that knocks it out of the park. The twangy country score of “The Good Dinosaur” didn’t really leave an impact on me, and again this is frustrating because even mediocre Pixar films like “Brave” and “Cars” at least have some standout songs.
All in all, “The Good Dinosaur” is a fine kids’ movie. The animation is breathtaking at parts and the plot comes together enough to have some quality moments, but it certainly isn’t a must-see film.
_MOVE gives “The Good Dinosaur” two out of five stars._
