Dinosaur

Dinosaur movies often have a very repetitive formula. Unless they take on a more action-oriented approach like Jurassic Park where they share the spotlight with humans, dinosaur movies are often about travelling from one location to another, facing harsh dangers in scary environments with basic life lessons being learned along the way. Since The Land Before Time in 1988, no other dinosaur movie of its type has ever made anything up to its standard, or even close to great, and the blandly titled Dinosaur, which Disney released in the year 2000, doesn’t rock that boat. Set just before the asteroid hits the Earth, a dinosaur egg is picked up from its nest and miraculously finds its way to an island where a family of lemurs decide to raise him. Now a fully grown Iguanodon, the dinosaur named Aladar (voiced by D. B.  Sweeny) lives among his lemur family; his mother Plio (voiced by Alfre Woodard), his grandfather Yar (voiced by Ossie Davis), his brother Zini (voiced by Max Casella) and his little sister Suri (voiced by Hayden Panettiere), but that peaceful life is destroyed once the asteroid strikes and Aladar and his family find themselves without a home and family. Wandering a desolate wasteland, they come across a moving herd of dinosaurs heading to a safe place to hide from the vicious carnivores that prey on the weak. The leaders of the pack, Kron and Bruton (voiced by Samuel E. Wright and Peter Siragusa) push the herd too hard which results in several being left behind and at the mercy of predators, including two elderly dinosaurs behind named Baylene and Eema (voiced by Joan Plowright and Della Reese). With no other option, Aladar and his family tag along, slowly warming up to the Kron’s sister Neera (voiced by Julianna Margulies) and all have to work together to survive and find the safe location before they are found and eaten by the predators stalking them. Dinosaur was a commercial success (becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of the year) but received mixed reviews from critics who were unimpressed with the film’s lack of originality on regards to its plot. Much like the title, the real issue is just how bland and safe the film is overall despite featuring an animation style and look that should result in something harsher, darker, and more experimental for Disney. Its objectively not an awful movie as it features a few likeable elements, but overall, it’s an experience that leaves very little impression.

For a project that looks like it might be able to appeal to a more mature audience, it would’ve had a hard time with that considering the plot for this film is an outline that has been recycled in adult films (and even children’s films) for several years now. Following the Moses story, the plot for this film written by John Harrison, Robert Nelson Jacobs , Thom Enriquez, and Ralph Zondag (one of the directors on the film) presents nothing different from this outline, and it results in what should be a new experience feeling unbelievably stale and predictable. The film is thankfully only roughly 80 mins, so it doesn’t drag its feet for too long and understands its own simplicity, but it doesn’t distract away from an otherwise bland narrative. There is a grizzlyness to the movie that at least warrants the PG rating with a lot of death and grim visuals, and this more realistic approach needs some brutality in order to feel authentic, but that also isn’t done as well as it could as this vibe clashes anytime the characters talk. The screenplay for this movie by Harrison and Jacobs is already pretty poor overall, but it is especially evident through the dialogue, which is dated, simplistic and so very lame. Apparently, the original idea for the movie conceived by Phil Tippett and Paul Verhoeven was going to be much harsher and darker than what was given and would feature no dialogue outside of a narration (being akin to something like a nature documentary), and all of this sounds like a fantastic idea and would’ve match the tone and style much more, but once they left the project, Disney took over the film and made it a key element to make the animals talk. The film lacks a definable personality and atmosphere, feeling way to modernized for something that takes place in the prehistoric times and since the replacement directors, Ralph Zondang and Eric Leighton seemed more interested in the cutesy fun angle of this idea rather than the grim and survivalist nature of this idea, it definitely explains the film’s tonal problem. The dialogue feels way too modern, some of the actors, especially the main lead, don’t feel authentic, and with the references and even some of the effects, it’s a clear early 2000s product rather than a timeless story (a quality that you’d think would be easy for a story about Dinosaurs). It’s trying to capture this big important grand story which wows people with its effects, but when nothing about its plot stands out, it’s not going to last in its audience’s memory.

With a story this bare-bones and stale, it also doesn’t help when a majority of the cast are just as boring. They don’t need to be that complex as the focus should be on the journey itself rather than extremely deep roles, but it would’ve been nice if they weren’t so cookie-cutter. You’ve seen all these characters before and nothing about them stands out. The lead is just your generic good-natured role model who has to come into the role of leader despite having no real qualities of the position outside of being the lead, it’s not a very good character and D. B.  Sweeney’s voice is distractingly current and feels like a forced-celebrity inclusion rather than someone who actually fits. The supporting cast is just the same; Neera as a character does nothing of value and then has kids with the main character after sharing two scenes together, most of the lemur family carry familiar tropes that you’d see in any sit-com (with the goofy brother with all the one-liners voiced by Max Casella being the worst offender of that), and the jerky leader is just the jerky leader who never listens and sticks with his stubborn ways and his brother just acts as the same kind of role except he’s allowed to have a redemption arc. They are so one-dimensional and cartoony that’s it’s hard to feel for any of them when they are going such horrible situations and they don’t really stand as anything that memorable. Even the rules of the world make it hard to effectively pin down how to interpret some of these characters, as certain dinosaurs act like actual animals (almost like pets to other dinosaurs) and it’s never explained why, and it just feels like an odd decision that further disturbs the flow and tone of this story.  With that said, while they definitely aren’t great characters, some of them aren’t too bad. The two old dinosaurs at the back of the herd voiced by Della Reese and Joan Plowright are very likeable and endearing, you feel their struggle of being the slowest ones and endangering the herd, but you also feel their determination to keep going and keeping positive, there’s a soft elderly appreciation that comes from both of that works well in this kind of film. Plio, though being stuck as the basic mother archetype, is still a likeable representation of that role through the expected but nice enough writing and Alfre Woodard as the voice, and the character of Bruton is made decently likeable once he does make that shift and tries to repent for his past mistakes by helping those in need even if it could cost him his life. It feels like the characters that could been interesting weren’t given enough screen-time to leave a bigger impression, with that being reserved for characters like the lead, the love interest, and the villain, who just aren’t very interesting to watch.

Since the film was pretty much from the get-go through its advertising banking on its CGI effects to draw people in, you’d would hope that the effects would be one of the best elements of this movie, and in some ways, they are. The opening, which is essentially the trailer, is very well done as seeing this egg travel from its nest to opening seas with grand dinosaurs over superimposed visuals of real-life landscapes is beautiful to witness, it looks really cool, the combination of real footage and animated creation isn’t distracting next to each other, and it gives the impression that it will lead to a lot of beautiful environments later on in the film. However, once the asteroid hits, the environments all the look the same, being very washed-out, dirty, and grey. It works for the more aggressive atmosphere they’re going for as you wouldn’t imagine the Earth would look great right after the meteor hit, but it results in the film getting tiring to look at after a while, especially because the plot and characters aren’t good enough to distract people away from how limiting these visuals are. It’s not all bad, as most of the dinosaurs look appropriate in terms of scale and some of the textures on them actually look pretty good for the time (especially in the opening 5 mins) which can also be said for the lemurs as their simple designs would’ve made it easy to animate them with realistic enough textures while still being able to give them expression, but this isn’t true for the main character. He and anyone else in his breed of dinosaur looks pretty plastic and even slightly alien-like with the shade of color and the long head mixed with the tiny eyes, they just don’t look right. The music is actually pretty good; composer James Newton Howard captures the epic scale of the movie even if the story doesn’t, with some nice musical pieces with cool melodies and unique instrumentation.

Dinosaur is just another dinosaur film in a long line up that would keep up the expected formula with every other instalment without much deviation. Since the trope was still a little fresh at the point and hadn’t been reused to the point of annoyance, it allowed a bit of a pass, but it can’t escape its other shortcomings like its bland characters, the predictable narrative, the modern-day references, and its overall lack of personality. It’s not an awful movie with anything offensive or hurtful in it and kids can watch it fine, but at best it’s a mediocre film with a few likeable side characters, some good effects for the time, a very impressive and visually pleasing opening, and a great soundtrack, but these aren’t enough to save the film. It tried to be this grand epic film that wanted to be edge and dark but was still easily outpaced by a smaller yet someone more epic and even harsher animated flick (which has to this day, still not been dethroned). It’s a fossil of the past, but not one that warrants excitement.