The Good Dinosaur - seen it!

Cafe Society
1

Kids and I saw The Good Dinosaur, Pixar’s latest, this Thanksgiving weekend. Spoilers likely below…
It was indeed Good. Not great. Retread of a tired storyline. Amazing animation of the nature scenes. It’ll fall somewhere near the back of the pack in terms of ranking all of the Pixar movies, ahead of Planes and Cars 2 but behind Bugs Life and Ratatouille.

I loved the short however, with the Hindu gods. That was amazing.

Anyone else?

2

The short was very good. Touching.

The story was uninspiring. Though I spent most of it trying to decide if the landscape was photography or animated. It’s that good.

3

So should I see it or not? My take from others critiques is that it’s an average movie.

4

I saw it and got bored.

5

I did not care for the short at all. I found it preachy. Just imagine all of the Hindu imagery was replaced by Christian imagery. Obviously the point is not “you should believe in this religion”, but “father and son bond”, but even so, if it was all Christ imagery it would be cloying.

Sure there’s the issue of dominant culture vs non-dominant, etc., but it’s not like this was a movie that was particularly US-specific, or anything.

I just did not care for it.
As for the main movie, I agree with the general consensus… visually captivating, and an enjoyable enough story, but there really wasn’t much there.

6

The short was great.

The intro from the director thanking us for seeing the movie was horrible, useless, and cringe-worthy.

The movie itself was OK. Seemed geared towards much younger kids. I found the visual mismatch between the near photorealistic nature shots and the cartoony animals jarring. The dinosaur with all the protective pets was delightfully weird though.

7

The visuals were amazing, and the family enjoyed it.

I felt they could have done more with the story line. (Spoilers)

  1. We have yet another parental death. It was superfluous.
  2. The relationship between the dinosaur and the boy was a weird re-tread of boy and dog, with the Dino assuming the “boy” role and the boy acting like a dog. He even howled. I don’t think it would have taken much effort to make the movie about two intelligent species learning to communicate and cooperate.
  3. At the end, dog-boy suddenly starts walking and leaves. With his new family, who also suddenly move from 4 legs to two. A bit of a WTF.
8

Cartoon evolution. The sequel will involve an adult Spot, war leader of a huge tribe that’s learned to hunt dinosaurs with spears and crossbows.

9

I liked it more than I expected. Not among the best Pixars but comfortably in the middle of the pack.

I loved the early scenes of dinosaur farming and the nature shots were stunning; this may be the best-looking CG animated film I have ever seen.

I liked the main character arc between Arlo and Spot and found the end quite moving.

However most of the rest of the story and characters were average and the villains in particular were rather half-baked.

10

OK, I’m reviving this zombie because the movie is on cable now, and the Mrs. and I finally saw it. Our opinion:

Least fave Pixar movie so far. And we’ve seen Cars (but didn’t see Cars II).

It was visually rich, but just didn’t deliver the way Pixar flicks usually do. Not clever, not subtle, not particularly funny. Aimed strictly at young kids, without much reward for the adults taking them to the movie.

And couldn’t agrarian sauropods have been shown to have evolved some sort of manipulative appendages? How the hell did they build a grain silo much less tie complex knots for the snare?

And how’d that one cameo (the triceratops with coping issues) get such a short shrift, anyway? Such unrealized potential . . .

And how’d the feral human kid manage to keep his loincloth on the whole time, anyway? (I know, I know, the same way Tarzan did).

The cowboy T Rex was not bad, though. :wink:

I guess I just expect more from Pixar, and don’t feel they really delivered with this one.