The Good Dinosaur Movie Review

The Good Dinosaur (2015)

Buy The Good Dinosuar
Written by: Bob Peterson (original concept & development by), Peter Sohn & Erik Benson & Meg LeFauve & Kelsey Mann & Bob Peterson (story by),  Meg LeFauve (screenplay), Peter Hedges &Adrian Molina (additional screenplay material by)
Directed by: Peter Sohn
Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Sam Elliot, 
Rated: PG

 Plot:
In this world, the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs never hit Earth. Arlo the dino makes an unlikely feral human friend in his adventure to rejoin his family when he gets separated.

Verdict:
Don't believe the bad reviews. This is a very good movie, it's just not as creative as Inside Out (2015), and Pixar's usual fare. While the story feels like something we've seen before, it's a very good rendition that ties together well. It's nearly the prototypical overcoming adversity movie, and the animation is definitively stand out.
Watch it.

Review:
I read criticism that this wasn't up to Pixar standards, and that releasing Inside Out (2015) and The Good Dinosaur proves they shouldn't do two in a year. With that, I was expecting a mediocre movie, but this is really good. It's not a genre definer quite like Pixar's flagship movies, but it's still really good with nice writing and character development.

The story is basically a boy and his dog overcome great adversity. The twist is that the boy is actually a dinosaur and his 'dog' is a feral human.

Arlo is the runt of the litter on his parents farm and scared of everything. His one goal is to make a figurative mark by contributing to the farm and a literal mark by putting a muddy footprint on the farm's silo, next to his parents and siblings' footprints to notate his accomplishments. The ultimate theme of the movie is that making a mark isn't always about size and physical prowess, sometimes it's about being brave and helping others.

The Good Dinosaur - A very good, but already proven tale.

A couple of setbacks separate Arlo from his family, and he's on a wild adventure to rejoin them. He meets various friends and foes on his return trip. This is where he gets to transform and become brave through his travels with his human friend Spot, a feral boy.

Arlo and Spot have a great dynamic, and Spot is the driving force that transforms Arlo. Through the plot progression, Arlo gets the chance to overcome the situation that made him the most scared and a second chance to defeat the bad pterodactyls that he couldn't best before. By the end of the movie, instead of running scared, he takes his foes head on.

You can't help but root for Spot especially, and Arlo. He learns what true courage is and what it means to be brave. Being brave isn't about suppressing fear, it's about acting when the situation demands it. This movie is about struggle, survival, and overcoming the odds. You can tell where this is going, and that's what make it rote.

This is a story we've seen countless times before, which is atypical for Pixar. It's the typical tale of a scared character facing adversity and overcoming. This picks the best parts from the genre, mixing up the roles. I like that the typical human and dino roles are reversed with a human guard dog and easily frightened dinosaur, but a role reversal isn't revolutionary. The movie does this a couple of times where the characters we think will be adversarial, end up helping Arlo.

There is a quick scene where Arlo and Spot eat rotten fruit and have a drug trip. It was completely out of place and unnecessary.

I was expecting a scene where Arlo recounts his tale to his family to their disbelief, showing them his scars as proof, but that scene never came. Arlo didn't get a big triumphant moment, and the ending felt rushed. Once he returns the movie ends soon after.

The animation is amazing. The landscape is often near photo realistic with some of the best rendered water I've seen. The lighting and fog effects are highlighted by a pair of firefly scenes, ostensibly made just to show off the technology. While the dinosaurs and Spot are rendered well, they aren't as finely detailed. Either the landscape is too good or the dinos aren't good enough. It just seemed like a mismatch with the landscape looking so much better than the characters.