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    The Good Dinosaur

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    I’ve got a conundrum. I’ll reluctantly admit that compared to “Toy Story” or “The Incredibles”, the latest Disney Pixar film isn’t on the same level. That’s not to say it’s a bad movie. The animation is some of the most realistic I’ve seen and very cleverly executed (I’ll get to that in a bit), it also has a lot of mix of emotions that ground the story. Some of the drama actually made me shed a few tears. The dilemma is then “can I remove myself from my expectations and just see the movie by itself? ” If you have to dig down an extra five meters to strike gold instead of the precise distance you were told at the beginning of the day, aren’t you still striking gold? Call me biased but I’ll still give “The Good Dinosaur” a full score. Want to know why? Read on.

    The film is set in an alternate history where dinosaurs were never whipped out. Now they can speak, raise families, build houses and grow crops. When a runt Apatosaurus (a long neck dinosaur) named Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) is separated from his family and lost in the wilderness he befriends a critter. This wild animal, a pest that has been eating his family’s crops is a human (voiced by Jack Bright in a series of grunts and snarls) As they make their way back to Arlo’s farm, the two become friends.

    When I first saw trailers for “The Good Dinosaur” I had mixed feelings about the character designs, but I’m sold now. What immediately struck me when in the theatre is that the fields of corn, the grass, the water, the trees, the dirt can now be generated via computer in a fashion that’s so realistic you can’t tell that it’s artificial. We might not quite be there with human beings, but we’re close. My biggest criticism of CG animated films is that the technology they are using no longer restricts creativity and ends up making a lot of characters or elements look too similar. Look at hand-drawn animation and you will notice that more frequently, different artists have different tricks or ideas as to how to simplify hair, or how to draw water. Now you can just make hair or make water. The stylistic choices are vanishing. In “The Good Dinosaur” though, the unique character designs and the styles are there. Arlo is a unique creation, as are all of the dinosaurs in the film. Even if we truly knew what dinosaurs looked like, there’s no way they look like these. The world they live in is unique not only in the sense that dinosaurs can talk and build grain silos to store their food in, but the story shows you how they manage this without simply having them stand on their two back legs and giving them hands. I was particularly impressed with the animation because several things are done here that I have not witnessed before. For example, you see Arlo get scratched and bruised when he falls down a small cliff, or bumps his knee. It adds weight to the peril and shows that much more of an attention to detail. There are also numerous scenes where no dialogue is present at all, since the human “pet” does not speak, but everything that is being “said” is clear as day because of the visuals in the eyes of the body movement.

    The best things about “The Good Dinosaur” are the emotions and the relationships. There are comedic moments, scenes where your adrenaline is pumping because our heroes are in danger but you also get parts that are serious or sad. Everyone a full range of emotion and when you see fictional characters exhibit this it makes them feel genuine. You can fully relate to a dinosaur that is lost in the woods and the dilemmas he faces concerning the human that accompanies him. You might not have been in that exact scenario, but you understand how it would feel to be there. There are a few points during the middle where I was thinking to myself that the movie was simply good instead of great, but with the way it roused up the feelings inside me as the picture concluded, I feel like it was building towards something that I was simply not consciously aware of. The ending is very strong and it made me realize how invested I was in the picture.

    I don’t think that “The Good Dinosaur” is going to ultimately be your new favorite animated family film, but that’s ok. It’s still got some big laughs, gorgeous animation, memorable moments, fully developed characters and a story that’s worth the price of admission. The movie looks great in 3-D, with several scenes that use the technology to its fullest and you get your money’s worth because it also preceded by an animated short “Sanjay’s Super Team”. It impressed me a lot. I like learning about cultures I’m not familiar and children should be exposed to them… even when it’s through fantastical stories. It’s teeming with both originality and an identity of its own and it takes chances, perhaps more than “The Good Dinosaur” does.

    I had a great time with “The Good Dinosaur” and my 11-year-old nephew did too. We both came out of the theatre excited to discuss it and praising the smart decisions made throughout. I’m not saying that he’s a movie critic, but that experience tells me that there’s something here for everyone. The more I think about it, the more I really like the character designs. I wonder if I can find a miniature Arlo figure to put on my desk and remind me of how much I enjoyed the film while I wait for it to be released on home video. It’s not Pixar’s strongest film, but it still soars. (3-D Theatrical version on the big screen, November 28, 2015)

    10
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    adamwatchesmovies@  29.11.2015 age: 26-35 2,866 reviews

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