The Good Dinosaur



Pixar’s
second cartoon of 2015, featuring a young Apatosaurus who adopts a
rather savage human boy, is a disappointingly conventional affair.
Of
course, dinosaurs are nothing new to animation. Gertie the Dinosaur
made her inaugural appearance in 1914 and is often considered to be the
first cartoon character (although she isn’t). Since then, we’ve had
everything from
The
Land Before Time to
Ice
Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. So what’s new about
The Good Dinosaur?
Not a lot. Following the startling invention and imagination of Pixar’s
Inside Out,
the studio’s second animated foray of 2015 is bit of a let-down.
There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just rather conventional. The twist
is that the human protagonist – Spot – is a sort of pet to Arlo, a
young Apatosaurus. Besides that, there’s the usual homilies about the
value of family, standing on one’s own four feet and the selflessness
of true love, but not a lot more.
The central characters themselves are
rendered in the traditional plastic mode of animation, while the
background imagery is photo-realistic, with terrific foliage and water
effects. There’s even a special credit for the ‘volumetric clouds
supervisor’ and, yes, the cloud work is impressive, particularly when a
series of shark-like fins appear in the cumulonimbus to signal an
attack by a wake of pterodactyls. Talking of the pterodactyls, these
are vicious, predatory creatures, and they don’t have Liverpudlian
accents. They may largely account for the PG certificate, although the
advocacy of evil featured in the U-rated
Minions is far more
disturbing.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Voices of Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright,
Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin, Steve Zahn, Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand.
Dir Peter Sohn, Pro
Denise Ream, Screenplay
Meg LeFauve, Pro Des Harley Jessup,
Ed Stephen Schaffer, Music
Mychael Danna and Jeff Dana.
Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar Animation
Studios-Walt Disney.
100 mins. USA. 2015. Rel: 27 November 2015.
Cert. PG.