Reading reviews for Pixar’s latest animation sometimes aggravates me. Due to the high benchmark set by their previous efforts—most notably the recent much-praised Inside Out--naturally Pixar loyalists expected an even higher benchmark. Oh puh-leasee. Sometimes people—or to be more specific, adults—forget that the work of animations by default are geared towards the young’uns, so no matter how sophisticated the narrative has become, such as the groundbreaking Wall-E or Up!, but their core audience is still your children or nephew and nieces. The fact that most of Pixar/Walt Disney’s animation are family friendly (plus non pop culture specific such as the Shrek series) is indeed a bonus.
Which brings me to The Good Dinosaur, a charming and exciting tale of interspecies adventure to overcome all odds against the backdrop of stunning Americana landscape by way of Wyoming and Montana. It envisions a world where dinosaurs weren’t extinct and instead developed an agricultural lifestyle, and one such family is a group of Apatosaurus (headed by the voice of Jeffrey Wright and Frances McDormand) that grows corn and raises scary-looking chickens too! At the heart of the story is the runty and timid Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) who after being separated from his family befriends a caveboy Spot (Jack Bright) and together they search the wilderness route that leads to home. As expected, along the way they met adorable as well as sketchy characters such as the vicious pink cobra(saurus?) with legs, sage pet-collecting styracosaurus, creepy pterodactyls, and redneck velociraptors.
Some critics complain that The Good Dinosaur isn’t trying to elevate the norm of the genre and instead chose to traverse a familiar route. Now, to each his own, I know, but according to my 29-year-old kid-at-heart movie companion next to me, the Peter Sohn-directed flick (with story credit from Meg LeFauve who also wrote Inside Out) hits all the right note: laugh-out-loud funny filled with endearing wide-eyed characters but per usual also has beautiful bittersweet moments and underlying theme of family—and friendship—is everything. (Well, actually the core theme is you can always make your mark in life and be courageous regardless of your size.) Plus it’s quite inventive as well: I never would’ve expected that The Good Dinosaur is Pixar’s version of a “western”: here we’ve got the amusing sight of a bison-shepherding and harmonica-playing “cowboys” in the form of a family of Southern twang-accented T-Rex (perfectly voiced by Sam Shephard, Anna Paquin, and AJ Buckley). And did I mention already the very Americana landscape?
My only complaint is just that the connection between Arlo and his stern but loving dad wasn’t explored enough that in one crucial and supposedly emotional scene I didn’t feel heavy-hearted at all. And The Good Dinosaur despite its originality sometimes do echoes past effort of Disney animations, most notably The Lion King. But, who cares, if that was meant to evoke warmth and familiarity then it doesn’t matter at all. What matters is The Good Dinosaur succeeds in entertaining and—sometimes—making me all gooey inside, especially in a scene involving Arlo and Spot wordlessly describing their family. The visuals are photo-realistically stunning, made even more so with the interesting decision to make the design of the dinosaurs very cartoonish—to make them more adorable if you ask me.
Just watch The Good Dinosaur on its own merit. Let go of today’s troubling tendency of comparing one another. Sometimes, less can be sooo much more. For sure, it’s a worthy addition to your Pixar’s boxed set.
Which brings me to The Good Dinosaur, a charming and exciting tale of interspecies adventure to overcome all odds against the backdrop of stunning Americana landscape by way of Wyoming and Montana. It envisions a world where dinosaurs weren’t extinct and instead developed an agricultural lifestyle, and one such family is a group of Apatosaurus (headed by the voice of Jeffrey Wright and Frances McDormand) that grows corn and raises scary-looking chickens too! At the heart of the story is the runty and timid Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) who after being separated from his family befriends a caveboy Spot (Jack Bright) and together they search the wilderness route that leads to home. As expected, along the way they met adorable as well as sketchy characters such as the vicious pink cobra(saurus?) with legs, sage pet-collecting styracosaurus, creepy pterodactyls, and redneck velociraptors.
Some critics complain that The Good Dinosaur isn’t trying to elevate the norm of the genre and instead chose to traverse a familiar route. Now, to each his own, I know, but according to my 29-year-old kid-at-heart movie companion next to me, the Peter Sohn-directed flick (with story credit from Meg LeFauve who also wrote Inside Out) hits all the right note: laugh-out-loud funny filled with endearing wide-eyed characters but per usual also has beautiful bittersweet moments and underlying theme of family—and friendship—is everything. (Well, actually the core theme is you can always make your mark in life and be courageous regardless of your size.) Plus it’s quite inventive as well: I never would’ve expected that The Good Dinosaur is Pixar’s version of a “western”: here we’ve got the amusing sight of a bison-shepherding and harmonica-playing “cowboys” in the form of a family of Southern twang-accented T-Rex (perfectly voiced by Sam Shephard, Anna Paquin, and AJ Buckley). And did I mention already the very Americana landscape?
My only complaint is just that the connection between Arlo and his stern but loving dad wasn’t explored enough that in one crucial and supposedly emotional scene I didn’t feel heavy-hearted at all. And The Good Dinosaur despite its originality sometimes do echoes past effort of Disney animations, most notably The Lion King. But, who cares, if that was meant to evoke warmth and familiarity then it doesn’t matter at all. What matters is The Good Dinosaur succeeds in entertaining and—sometimes—making me all gooey inside, especially in a scene involving Arlo and Spot wordlessly describing their family. The visuals are photo-realistically stunning, made even more so with the interesting decision to make the design of the dinosaurs very cartoonish—to make them more adorable if you ask me.
Just watch The Good Dinosaur on its own merit. Let go of today’s troubling tendency of comparing one another. Sometimes, less can be sooo much more. For sure, it’s a worthy addition to your Pixar’s boxed set.