Directed by Peter Sohn
Starring Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, and Sam Elliot
Two Pixar films in one year you say?? How awesome can that be?? Well, it's not double the amount of awesome Pixar you're probably hoping for. It's more like at the level of awesome and-a-half. That's not to say The Good Dinosaur is a bad film. It's just not going to break any ground like Wall-E, Up, or the studio's other, more superior offering of this year, Inside Out.
The Good Dinosaur takes place in a world where the asteroid never hit Earth, and the dinosaurs were never wiped out. Arlo (Ochoa) is the youngest of a family of apatosaurus. Both small and very skittish, Arlo struggles to "make his mark" on the family farm and the world. Arlo's assignment to take care of a pest on the farm, a thieving, feral cave boy (Bright), combined with a series of unfortunate events, leaves him lost and far away from home.
The young dinosaur must learn to survive in the wilderness and find his way back to his family. Along the way he gains the assistance and friendship of the cave boy, whom he nicknames Spot. Together, the two encounter a gang of savage pterdactyls, a family of T-Rex "ranchers" (Elliot plays Butch the father), among other surprises and perils of this prehistoric wilderness.
The film's story is nothing new or special. It's a "boy and his dog" story, which have never done too much for me (Probably because I've never had a pet that wasn't a fish). There's also the obvious comparison to The Land Before Time, and the keen eye can also spot (no pun intended) that the film borrows a little bit from The Lion King and Bambi. Baring all that in mind, words like "predictable" and "cliche" might be applied to The Good Dinosaur.
Don't get me wrong though, you still can get invested in the story, and the relationship of our two main characters. The two young boys voicing them deserve some credit for that. Ochoa gives an emotional performance as young Arlo, and Bright manages to bring Spot to life only through howls, growls, etc. Combine their performances with spectacular character animation, and you have another winning Pixar bromance on the screen.
To further expand on the animation of the film, it's gorgeous. At times I wasn't sure if I what I was looking at was animated or live-action. The design of the characters are more cartoony than the scenery, but they blend together in a strange, unexplainable way.
The rest of the voice cast does good work. Sam Elliot is playing to type (perfectly) as Butch. Jeffrey Wright and Frances McDormand give small but strong performances as Arlo's parents. Steve Zahn's performance as lead pterodactyl Thunderclap is probably one of his better and more tolerable characters. At this moment I can't seem to recall John Ratzenberger's cameo. I can remember the character by looking at the IMDB page, but not the voice. Part of me still wonders what the film would be like with its original voice cast (and story), that included Neil Patrick Harries, John Lithgow, and Bill Hader, but que sera.
Some stylistic decisions the filmmakers went with left me scratching my head. There are hints of a western motif, but it's never really established outside of some parts of the score, and the T-Rex characters. The filmmakers also designed it so when the T-Rexes run, they look like they're cowboys riding horses, which just looks…strange. Then, there were some very surprising jokes and sight gags that left me going, "Is this really in a Pixar film?" The best example would be at one point, Arlo and Spot eat some "bad berries"...yeah…
I feel like I've knocked the film as much as I've praised it. To summarize, there is nothing bad about The Good Dinosaur. There's just nothing new. It still has plenty of eye-watering emotions and stellar animation you'd expect from Pixar. While you definitely can get invested in the characters, particularly Arlo and his relationships with Spot and his father, the story is nothing unique. It's good but not great. I'd put it on the same level as some of the studio's lesser efforts like Brave or Monsters University, and like Brave, part of me feels like the right audience for this film is probably back in the nineties. But it's 2015, and The Good Dinosaur lives up to the "Good" part of its name.
If you're a diehard Pixar fan, you should still give this film a chance. If you only want to see one Pixar film this year, well I guess be glad you already saw Inside Out.
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