Review: THE GOOD DINOSAUR

THE GOOD DINOSAUR  

(ANIMATION/ADVENTURE)
2 out of 4 stars
Directed by Peter Sohn
Featuring the Voices of: Raymond Ochoa, Jeffrey Wright, Jack Bright, Sam Elliot, Frances McDormand, Anna Paquin, A.J. Buckley, Steve Zahn, Marcus Scribner, Maleah Padilla, Peter Sohn, Dave Boat, Carrie Paff
Rated PG for peril, action and thematic elements.
100 minutes
Verdict: Unfocused and surprisingly weird, the fruits of Pixar's most troubled production may not be anything special, but it has its moments, and it's interesting, to say the least.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN THE GOOD DINOSAUR IF YOU LIKED:
A BUG'S LIFE  (1998)
BRAVE  (2012)
BROTHER BEAR  (2003)
CITY SLICKERS  (1991)
THE CROODS  (2013)

Pixar Animation Studios' 16th feature film, THE GOOD DINOSAUR, opening only a few days over two decades since the original TOY STORY opened over Thanksgiving 1995, comes with a lot of baggage after what by all appearances was one of the most problematic productions since the beginning.  The original writer/director, longtime Pixar story man Bob Peterson (co-director of UP), was removed due to "story problems" a couple years after the film was first announced, the release date has been moved from November 2013 to May 2014 before landing on the current date, the story has been taken apart and put back together repeatedly, and the original voice cast recording was replaced with a mostly new cast just this summer.  To be fair, all of Pixar's films have had their initial stories wildly rearranged throughout their lengthy development stages, but THE GOOD DINOSAUR had those issues going on much later into production than usual.
Considering all the behind-the-scenes drama, THE GOOD DINOSAUR is a lot better than it might have been, clearly landing in the lower tier of Pixar's film canon, but still a lot better than CARS 2 and certainly more interesting than MONSTER'S UNIVERSITY.  The word "interesting" is interchangeable with "weird" here.  Pixar has a well-earned reputation for bold storytelling that might be described as weird, but THE GOOD DINOSAUR is just weird, not "bold".
The film opens with a very brief prologue setting up an alternate world where the asteroid that theoretically killed off the dinosaurs merely passes over Earth's atmosphere, leaving the thunder lizards as the dominant species on the planet for millions of years that follow.  All of this feels like a leftover concession to an earlier version of the story, because for as much prominence it is given, it simply isn't necessary to the world of this film.  They're cartoon dinosaurs, and there happen to be feral humans on the margins; nothing terribly unique about that concept.  However, these dinosaurs are fitted to a frontier movie-style format where herbivore dinosaurs are farmers, carnivores are ranchers, and there are hillbilly cattle rustlers in the form of velociraptor, and humans are listed among the many mostly mammal "critters" of the wilderness.  Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) is an abnormally fainthearted young Apatosaurus who lives on his family's farm with Poppa (v. Jeffrey Wright), Momma (v. Frances McDormand), and his much sturdier siblings, Libby (v. Maleah Padilla) and Buck (v.Marcus Scribner).  When his excessive timidity interferes with the rest of the family's chores, Poppa takes Arlo into the wilderness in an attempt to help him face his fears, but an accident leaves Arlo by himself.  Washed away by the powerful river that runs by the farm, Arlo awakens miles away from home with a wild human child he dubs "Spot".

The story is slight but used to house some very large, weighty themes, resulting in a strange dynamic that parallels the weird visual balance between the most cartoony-looking characters of Pixar's feature canon and the most photo-realistic scenery they've ever delivered.  Like the majority of Pixar's movies, THE GOOD DINOSAUR is a buddy film, however, it's chock-full of aspirations to be THE LION KING.  Instead, it's more like BROTHER BEAR.  It feels like minor Disney Animation, not bad, but lacking focus and compensating for its story weaknesses with broad and heavy strokes of big emotion.  It wears its sincerity on its sleeves, sometimes to a successful effect, and other times radiating corniness.  The story brings Arlo and Spot through a North American Northwest-style frontier landscape that is rendered in awe-inspiring beauty, encountering a series of eccentric characters including a family of Tyrannosaurus Rex ranchers (voiced by Sam Elliot, Anna Paquin and A.J. Buckley), a very amusing Styracosaurus (voiced by the director, Peter Sohn) overwhelmed by fear of the world, and some storm-chasing Pterodactyls (voiced by Steve Zahn, Mandy Freund and Steven Clay Hunter) that bring with them some wild tonal shifts.  While Pixar has a well-earned reputation for sweetness and sadness, THE GOOD DINOSAUR throws in an unexpected dose of meanness.  "Mean-spirited" seems like an inappropriate label here, but this is probably Pixar's roughest movie as frequent and prolonged peril and abuse is dealt out to its overtly cute characters ahead of the ultimately reassuring outcome.  In many ways, it unexpectedly reminded me of BLAZING SADDLES, both featuring big melodrama in what's ostensibly a comic adventure with western elements, in the story of a wimp on a journey that teaches him to not be such a wimp, but without the clarity of intent.
THE GOOD DINOSAUR is substantially better than CARS 2 and more interesting than the vanilla MONSTERS UNIVERSITY, on a level similar to that of BRAVE in terms of Pixar's canon.  It's scattered and unfocused, with clunky tonal shifts and a split between the two directorial visions moderately apparent, but it's not a disaster by any means.  It's a very interesting, modestly entertaining, very, very weird misfire.

Images via Disney