The Good Dinosaur (2015) – Review

The question most likely asked by many a viewer of this film would be, “Just who was Pixar’s target audience for this movie?” As a studio, Pixar has easily one of the best track records, from the likes Toy Story to Inside Out they rarely let a person down (my exception is Cars as I couldn’t get behind a Doc Hollywood rip-off that had no intrinsic logic to its world), but with The Good Dinosaur, I’m really not sure what they were actually shooting for.

The movie’s basic premise was interesting enough, “What if the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs missed the Earth?” and after the near-miss, we jump ahead a few million years to find that dinosaurs have evolved to be farmers and cowboys. That makes sense, right?  We first meet two Apatosaurus named Henry (Jeffrey Wright) and Ida (Frances McDormand) who we see run a nice little farmstead, but this leads to my first question is, “How the Hell do you farm if you bloody well don’t have thumbs?” These dinosaurs did not evolve physically just mentally, and that is not how evolution works, and sure, you are all thinking “This is a kid’s movie, cut them some slack.” Well, I call bullshit on that, a kid’s movie doesn’t equal dumb and lazy. Even The Flintstones, which stuck man and dinosaurs together, never had Dino making a fence that required him constructing ropes and tying off the posts.

Do you know what’s missing from that shot? Fred and Barney, that’s what.

The couple gives birth to three children: Libby (Maleah Padilla), Buck (Marcus Scribner), and the runt Arlo (Raymond Ochoa). The two stronger children quickly prove their worth to the family but poor timid Arlo is practically afraid of everything, even the chickens they raise. Next question is, “Why are herbivores raising chickens?” and aside from seeing Arlo try and fail to feed them, we don’t find out what this family does with them.

I certainly wouldn’t eat any eggs that came out of that thing.

Henry is confident that Arlo will eventually find his place, and even gives him the important job of catching and killing whatever critter is sneaking into their grain silo and eating their food. One day Arlo manages to capture a feral caveboy (Jack Bright) in a trap, but he is too reluctant to kill him, and instead sets him free. Henry, with parental disgust, drags the poor kid out into a storm to track down the varmint, and this is when we get the standard “Disney Dead Parent Trope” where Henry is swept away and killed by a flash flood, much in the way Mufasa was by the herd of wildebeests in The Lion King.

“I’m totally blaming my evil uncle for this.”

When Arlo discovers the caveboy back in the silo the very next day, who he blames for the death of his father, he chases the little guy to finish the job his dead dad had given him.  Needless to say, Arlo’s track record of failure remains consistent as they both end up in the raging river which takes them far far from home. Will these two put aside their differences and work together to find home? Will Arlo’s animosity turn to friendship?  If you have to ask these questions you’ve probably never seen a movie before, but the makers of this film clearly have, and by having seen I mean they ripped off elements from The Land Before Time, Ice Age, Old Yeller, The Lion King, Finding Nemo, and The Incredible Journey. The premise of this movie is simply there to disguise worn-out plots that even the youngest child will have most likely seen before.

Though the heroes’ drug trip may be new to them.

Which brings us back to our initial question, “Just who was the intended audience?” The dad’s traumatic death and the constant threat of our little heroes getting eaten could send little ones into tears, while the complete antiseptic action (T-Rex’s attacks result in chomping and flinging of bodies but no blood) will leave adults and even most kids bored. The film also lacks much in the humour department, I chuckled maybe once in the film’s entire running time, and aside from the cute feral caveboy I never really got that invested in any of the characters, especially Arlo who just wasn’t all that interesting of a character. Pixar was clearly trying to tap into the “Coming of Age” element of Finding Nemo, but I found an Apatosaurus afraid of beetles to be a poor replacement for plucky Nemo and his little fin.

“Oh my god, it’s coming right at me!”

The film is certainly gorgeous to look at, the CGI environments were very photorealistic looking, though some may find that jarring when a stylized kid-friendly cartoon dinosaur romps through them. Disney made an excellent CGI film back in 2000 called Dinosaur, but there the environs matched the denizens quite well. Pixar clearly went for the cartoonier look to make their dinosaurs more “kid-friendly” and easily made into plush toys.

“My action feature will be to cower.”

Pixar does, of course, know how to push all the right emotional buttons as Arlo and the caveboy, who he names Spot, eventually bond over their travails and when certain decisions have to be made I’ll admit to welling up with a tear or two, then again, I’m a pretty soft touch for that kind of manipulations. Most kids will have asked to leave the theatre long before the emotional heart of the movie arrives.

A dinosaur and his boy, a tale as old as time.

Overall, I found the premise intriguing but the execution lazy, the action too scary for kiddies but too lame for adults, and the humour almost nonexistent.   Clearly, a lot of work went into this I only wish they’d spent a little more time on the story structure and gave me a protagonist I could care about and maybe spent a little less time on how real the trees look.  There is a lot of heart towards the end of the film (if you can make it that far), which all said and done just makes this a hard film to recommend.

Though I do simply love Spot.