“The Good Dinosaur” is an adequate family film, but it lacks
the thematic depth and richness of previous Pixar classics like Up, WALL-E and this year’s Inside Out. And while it has the typical
Disney messages of tolerance, friendship and perseverance, they seem obligatory
and obvious. The storyline meanders a bit too much and offers a variety of
cobbled together genres (there’s even a campfire and a cattle round-up).
Essentially it’s a buddy/road trip movie. The opening sequence explains that
the asteroid hypothesized to have caused the mass extinction event misses
Earth, allowing the dinosaurs to continue their existence unimpeded. Several
million years later, dinosaurs have developed into anthropomorphized creatures
while humans favor walking on all fours and yapping like dogs. Our hero, Arlo
(voiced by Raymond Ochoa), is the youngest member of an Apatosaurus family with
Dad (Jeffrey Wright), Mom (Frances McDormand) and older brother and sister.
They’re farmers with a pest problem – a human child (later named Spot) is
sneaking into their stores and eating their corn. Dad asks Arlo to exterminate
the intruder, but the young dinosaur can’t bring himself to kill. A chase
ensues and, when Arlo and his father are caught in a sudden storm, tragedy
occurs. The rest of the movie follows Arlo and Spot, swept away by a river to a
far-off place, as they make the homeward journey.
“The Good Dinosaur” has some of the most amazingly
photo-realistic backgrounds, including trees, steep mountainous cliffs and
raging rivers and waterfalls. The realism of the surroundings makes the
dinosaurs seem too cute and cartoonish. A role reversal casts a non-human as
the chatty protagonist and a prehistoric homo sapien as the sidekick/pet. And
while having Spot never utter a word, scratch himself and occasionally howl is
cute the first time, it gets old after a while. The best moment comes during a
scene where Arlo and Spot, who don’t share a language, use sticks to
communicate. There’s genuine emotion in this sequence, something the rest of
the movie could have used more of. So, if you have high expectations that
usually come with a Pixar production, you’ll be disappointed with “The Good
Dinosaur.” Go in with lower expectations and it’s not to bad. Faint praise?
No comments:
Post a Comment