The Good Dinosaur (2015)

The usual disclaimers apply here: I’m a Disney shill, love Pixar movies, and have a fondness for dinosaurs. I tend to cry buckets at each one of these films, etc. etc. Most of this is all still true, though quantitatively fewer tears were shed at The Good Dinosaur than at, say, Inside Out or Toy Story 3. And perhaps that’s emblematic of my reaction to The Good Dinosaur as a whole: it does a lot of the same things well that Pixar movies overall tend to do, but I’m left feeling a little bit less than I wanted.

In a world where dinosaurs never went extinct and instead took up agriculture, young Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) is desperate to prove himself to his family and make his mark on the world. After a storm separates him from his family, Arlo strikes up an unlikely bond with an evolving human he names Spot. Together, the pair has a whole lot of wilderness to cross before they can get back home.

Here’s the thing (and I know that I usually begin a sentence with that when there might be bad news to follow) – The Good Dinosaur is a bit of disappointment in much the same way (though certainly not to the same degree) that I was disappointed by the trailer for the dismal specter of Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Road Chip: “Oh, this again.” I say the difference is by degree, for there’s little more soul-shattering than the looming threat of yet another squeaky-voiced milked-for-its-last-dollar insult to the word “comedy.” But there is, unfortunately for a studio otherwise prized for its innovation, something all too familiar about The Good Dinosaur. There’s a liberal amount borrowed from The Lion King, The Land Before Time (one of them, anyway), and even a bit from Disney’s own Dinosaur only fifteen years back.

This level of distraction, a kind of narrative déjà vu, is never a good sign on film, because it means that the story isn’t holding you as closely as it ought to be. And indeed, The Good Dinosaur retreads quite literally much of the same ground as some of Pixar’s better films – Toy Story and its sequel, Brave, Up, Finding Nemo, and to a degree Inside Out – in that it’s yet another story about someone traveling through somewhere to get home and learning something about themselves in the process. Yes, it’s a tale at least as old as Homer’s Odyssey, but there’s something less compelling about it this time around (I never, for example, noticed until now the repetition in Inside Out of the road story).

Rather than play backseat driver to the film and tell it what it should have done differently, I will say that the film isn’t a failure. It is simply, as the title indicates, good but not great. It’s a testament to the strength of Pixar’s abilities that even one of its less successful films is still quite good. Two things really stand out here, the first of which is the animation, particularly of the backgrounds. The backdrops are visually breathtaking, and it’s worth staying through the first round of end credits just to see these images unadulterated by the presence of animated figures in the foreground. Though the cartoony nature of the characters never quite resolves with the photorealistic settings, there are moments when it’s quite easy to forget that none of what you’re seeing is real; the mountains, skies, and running waters of the film are visually stunning.

Second, the tears. And yet, there are some to be had in The Good Dinosaur, and they’re in wordless sequences – first, when Arlo tries to communicate with the nonverbal Spot, and second, at the end of their journey together. Again, these scenes show us what the studio can do better than most other filmmakers by tugging at those heartstrings in unexpected yet profound moments. The drawing of a circle never felt so emotional before The Good Dinosaur.

It is, as I’ve said, good but not great – worth the watch, certainly, better than most of the animated drivel (do we need, for example, an Angry Birds movie?) ostensibly targeting the same demographic. The Good Dinosaur maintains the visual standard set by Pixar, even if the story never quite rises above the level of “serviceable.”

The Good Dinosaur is rated PG for “peril, action and thematic elements.” There are some mean dinosaurs in here, some bloodless violence involving such creatures, and a few implied dinosaur deaths.

Bonus review! The Good Dinosaur comes packaged with a delightful short named Sanjay’s Super Team. In it, Pixar displays their gift for wordless storytelling in a story about a boy whose love of superheroes comes into conflict with his father’s devout prayers, until the young Sanjay realizes the two are not wholly irreconcilable. Deeply personal, Sanjay’s Super Team is a worthy appetizer – better placed, perhaps, in front of the forthcoming Incredibles 2 – and a real treat for me, because I’m a very easy sell when it comes to both Pixar and superheroes. The video game-inflected animation is a unique addition to the Pixar canon, and its blend of family values and superheroism is over all too soon. Can we get a full-length Sanjay feature?