Reviewed: The Good Dinosaur (PG)

I missed reviewing this Disney / Pixar animated feature on its UK release on November 27. I finally got around to seeing it just before Christmas as it is still currently showing in the cinemas through to next week.

What I do know is that the film received some mixed reviews both in the US and over here.

The premise of the story is “What if the asteroid that hit earth 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs actually missed its target?” Therefore, allowing the creatures to evolve and learn how to build a farm house and harvest crops using their strength together with the use of tools.

The film follows the exploits of a young Apatosaurus (a kind of bright green Brontosaurus) called Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) who is the runt of the litter behind a lively sister Libby and musclebound alpha brother Buck.

The three newly hatched Dino’s are brought up to work on the family farm and make their mark…literally!

Arlo isn’t as strong or as brave as his brother and sister, so his Poppa (Jeffrey Wright) entrusts Arlo with the responsibility of catching and disposing of the critter that has been breaking into the stone built silo and eating their crops.

The culprit turns out to be a young feral cave boy whose characteristics are closer to a canine preferring to move around on all fours and only grunts. Arlo can’t bring himself to kill the critter but his Poppa forces him to join him in tracking the wild creature down to finish him off.

However, when a powerful storm erupts, the pair of them get separated in a flood and Arlo becomes injured and lost in the wilderness where he encounters some not so friendly dinosaurs.

Ironically it’s the wild cave boy who comes to Arlo’s rescue and together they set off to find a way back to Arlo’s family.

Having watched the initial teaser trailer for this film, I was slightly put off by the simplistic cartoony drawings particularly of Arlo and his family. They all looked too cutesy as if aimed at an extremely young audience. Yet at the same time the creative team produced some mind blowing photorealistic CGI animation of the roaring river and landscapes that play a big part in the film which didn’t seem to have any correlation to the basic look of Arlo.

That aside the writing and storytelling was pure Disney / Pixar with enough funny moments to keep Mum and Dad amused for most of the 93 minutes. I say most, because the film does take a little while to kick-in but when it does it really works well and I really enjoyed it.

The friendship that Arlo and the cave boy have (Arlo names him Spot by the way) develops as the quest moves on and the writers manage to convey a great deal of emotion without much dialogue between the two which is extremely touching.

There are some wonderful characters that they run into especially a large Styracosaurus who is a very laid back, hippy mountain man of a dinosaur called Forest Woodbush (Peter Sohn). He wants Spot to join him as part of his band of tiny woodland animals that he has acquired along his journeys who nestle in his antlers and protect him (so he says). A very weird and funny moment!

The other surprise is the Cowboy trio of Tyrannosaurus Rex’s who agree to help Arlo if he and spot help them to get their herd of long horns back from some Raptor rustlers. The big Father figure of the T-Rex band is voiced by the old western stalwart Sam Elliot whose low gruff voice vibrates the back of your seat.

There is also a laugh out loud moment that involves some little hamster type creatures and some holes in the ground…brilliant!

As previously mentioned I enjoyed the film immensely but I was surprised at the number of cinema goers and reviewers who thought it was the worst Disney film they have ever seen. Some people claimed to have walked out half way through?

Much of this was down to a scene where Arlo and Spot eat some ‘gone-off’ fruit and have some weird hallucinations, which I thought was quite funny and was less scary than the famous ‘Pink Elephants on Parade’ spaced-out scene in Disney’s Dumbo.

I must admit there are one or two anxious moments that take you by surprise but that’s Disney. They’ve been playing with kid’s emotions for years and very successfully I might add. Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), Pinocchio (1940) and more recently UP (2009) to name but a few. But we survived without having therapy.

In fact, the moral of this story is that it’s good to be afraid sometimes and face your fears.

This movie really grew on me and just goes to show that you should never make your mind up on first impressions.