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| "You have to get through your fears to see the beauty on the other side." |
The Good Dinosaur is the latest effort from Pixar that focuses on the idea of what if the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs missed Earth, and they continued to roam the Earth alongside cavemen. Specifically, the film focuses on a young, unsure dinosaur named Arlo who has to face his fears when he's teamed with a savage young boy named Spot and stranded in the wild.
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| The relationship between Arlo and Spot is the film's greatest strength. |
Without going too much into detail, the structure and basic plot of
The Good Dinosaur is somewhat similar to such Disney classics as
The Jungle Book and even Pixar's own
Finding Nemo. The film is almost an anthology-like series of encounters as Arlo and Spot journey through the wild and meet various new characters, similar to Mowgli and Marlin's adventures on the way to their destination. However,
The Good Dinosaur doesn't seem to connect these individual encounters together as well as other examples, resulting in an enjoyable yet slightly disjointed narrative. Luckily, the film has an ace up its sleeve to keep everything together, and that's the emotional connection between Arlo and Spot. It could have been easy for either of these characters to become annoying, or Spot to become too one-dimensional and bland with his inability to communicate. Thankfully, quite the opposite is the case, and both characters are fantastically developed and their chemistry on-screen is the emotional core of the film.
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| Pixar's blend of unique character designs and gorgeous environments are stunning. |
On a technical level, the film is a marvel. The landscapes and scenery are absolutely beautifully and masterfully created. It becomes extremely difficult in some scenes to tell the difference from reality and animation. Given that the 20th anniversary of
Toy Story has just passed, it's hard to not be astonished at how far Pixar's animation has come. One aspect that is sure to be a more dividing aspect of the animation is the character models. There have already been criticisms of how cartoon-like the animation for Arlo is in contrast to the hyper realistic environments. However, this is an design aspect of the film that I actually really appreciated. As the line between CGI and reality becomes more and more blurred, the temptation must be there for them to create hyper real, impressive character models and forget their true animation roots. Personally speaking, I'm glad to see them use a distinct animation style here. In a time where the previous few Disney animations have been criticized for the style of humans being too similar, Pixar strives to make a unique style for their dinosaurs and succeeds.
The Good Dinosaur uses a simple but effective narrative plot to get events into motion, but sometimes it feels a bit too simple. In fact I was shocked when the film began wrapping up as it felt like a relatively short film, despite clocking in at 100 minutes. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why it felt short, but it seemed like it would have benefited from an extra ten or fifteen minutes. Overall, the film is far from Pixar's worst, but it doesn't quite reach its best as it is held back by its sometimes disjointed and clunky narrative. It can sometimes feels like a lesser version of
The Lion King and
Finding Nemo, and a few scenes in particular make it particularly hard to shake that idea. However, it is still a technical feat, and worth the price of admission alone just to explore the wonderful two protagonists Pixar have created here.
The Good Dinosaur - 7 / 10
