The Good Dinosaur

The Good Dinosaur is up there with Toy Story in terms of its technical achievement and for providing an equally heart-touching, emotional tale.

It makes you wince at the fragility of life while simultaneously welling up at the wonder of it – and that unexpected mixing of the sentimental and the existential left me feeling what can only be described as aww-struck.

The Good Dinosaur has an original concept, disarming emotional heft and features the most impressive visuals in animated cinema to date.

The resulting film is amiable, pretty, and charming in all the right ways — even if it ultimately settles for a fairly typical tale of a late bloomer finding his way.

Visually, The Good Dinosaur boasts some of the most amazingly photo-realistic sets I have seen in any animated film.

Notably undisciplined for a Pixar plot, it feels like a lot of heavy lifting to get to the same old lessons about kinship and finding your clan.

More manipulative, maudlin trash from the Disney-Pixar content farm.

Hermosa película, una gran historia. Los paisajes creados en esta película son de otro mundo, parece completamente real.

A lesser Pixar effort that's still meaningful and effective, swapping the roles of man and beast in a creative, interesting turn. Its tone is a bit conflicted, though, with a plot that's clearly aimed at younger audiences but several distressing scares and a harsh edge that might make it difficult for children to swallow. Thankfully, it's got a big heart, and an unexpectedly sharp sense of humor that often left me chuckling alongside my two young sons, so those frights were almost always immediately diffused. I didn't care for the overly-simplistic character designs, which call back to the stop-motion history of dinosaurs on film, but the landscapes are appropriately stunning and the big effects work is top-of-the-line. These guys know how to press their audience's buttons and provoke a visceral reaction, even in the midst a disastrous production with major seismic shifts behind the scenes. The Good Dino is a good adventure flick, deep and expansive, with a nice message and a strong character arc; fair, light entertainment at least. Again, I'd place it among Pixar's weaker films, but in that cellar it keeps fairly good company.

In my Cars 2 review, I mentioned that The Good Dinosaur was PIXAR's worst film. After rewatching it, I was a little harsh, but I still don't like it all that much. Coming right after Inside Out, this movie looks like a disaster. However, it's a perfectly safe and inoffensive movie, just low for PIXAR. One of the opening shots actually made my jaw drop because of how real it looked, which is the biggest praise I can say. Minus the character design, this is PIXAR's most beautiful looking film, it's just a shame that the story isn't all that great. It's an interesting spin on a "Western-ish" genre because instead of humans being the farmers and cowboys and rustlers it's dinosaurs. The marketing never revealed this information so it was an unpleasant surprise the first time I watched it and probably why I don't have many fond memories with this film. Now that I have rewatched it I can say that the story works well enough, I just don't like that dinosaurs are the main characters, which leads me to the character design. The movie looks gorgeous, but this clashes with very cartoony dinosaurs and it just does not work for me. It **** me out of the movie, which leaves the movie feeling forgettable. The story isn't awful but it sure doesn't help out the poor character design. The only characters I like are Arlo and Spot, but I can't say much else about the other characters because they're so forgettable. Lastly, I don't think kids would respond well to this movie. Kids love dinosaurs and seeing them like this I feel would be kind of weird for them. It certainly was for me. But there's also a lot of dark stuff that happens in this movie: decapitations, innocent animals being eaten gruesomely, acid trips, etc. It's strange for PIXAR, and that's about how I can sum up this movie. The Good Dinosaur is definitely PIXAR's strangest movie. However, I will say that after rewatching it, I do like The Good Dinosaur a little more than Cars 2. But similarly to Brave, I couldn't see myself watching it again.

From pushing the boundaries with 'Wall-E' to **** the barrel with 'The Good Dinosaur', Pixar certainly knows how to ride the creative roller coaster.SYNOPSIS: 'In a world where dinosaurs and humans live side-by-side, an Apatosaurus named Arlo makes an unlikely human friend.'I must remember this is a film really aimed at kids but I really dislike this film. Even though the film looks fantastic as you'd expect from a Pixar film (though a bit screen saver-esque in places), I absolutely HATE the animation of the main character Arlo and his family. It just isn't a dinosaur for me, and compared to the character design of the other dinosaurs it's just glaringly bad.Story wise it's the most mundane of any Pixar film, if not any Disney film, even ripping off 'The Lion King' for one of it's essential plot points. The innovation and imagination of previous Pixar films is just non existent here, maybe even extinct :)Pixar films shouldn't be forgettable but I wanted to forget this as quick as I'd seen **** for me.3/10

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]