The Good Dinosaur 2015
Usually it is a big deal when a Pixar movie is released, but somehow The Good Dinosaur managed to be low key. It also got less than stellar reviews, though still pretty good. Released around Thanksgiving, it had a lot of competition from Oscar-worthy movies and I never saw it. However, I’ve seen most Pixar movies, so I was glad to get a chance to record it and watch it over a year after it was released.
It is an odd movie. It takes a look at a parallel universe earth where the asteroid missed the earth and the dinosaurs lived. With more time to develop, they became farmers. Huh? Oh and some are cowboys. So it is kind of a frontier type Western about a family on a homestead and the weakling son needs to find his way. But they’re dinosaurs, very cartoony green dinosaurs. Maybe it’s a little like Ice Age which I wasn’t that crazy about either.
Reading about the movie, it had a lot of story problems, had some personnel changes, was years behind schedule and with the combination of high production costs and less than great box office, lost money. And it shows. At heart the story seems pretty derivative and kind of simple. The landscapes look great, taken from the American west, with strong influences of the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. And the movie is still able to pull on your heartstrings as a lost kid tries to get back to his family. The movie feels more like one of Disney’s misses than anything by Pixar, but maybe shows that Pixar can have misses too. It’s not a bad movie, it just isn’t that good, so it gets a B- from me.
Written: 08 Apr 2017
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital