Review: Dinosaur (2000)
Steve Rhodes
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
In an era of rapid technological change, the film industry stands out as
a veritable dinosaur. So it is all the more noteworthy when a film like
Disney's DINOSAUR makes such a stunning visual achievement through
radical blending of technologies. Combining some of the most
sophisticated computer-generated animation that you've ever seen with
(digitally enhanced) live-action backgrounds, the ground-breaking film
becomes a dinosaur documentary on steroids. It is the sort of picture
that has you sitting there going, "Wow!"
What are sorely absent, however, are Pixar and their band of merry men
to craft a script that can hold your attention. Instead, Disney relies
on writers John Harrison, mainly a television writer known for his dark
pieces in series like "Tales from the Crypt," and Robert Nelson Jacobs,
whose only other released script is the senior citizen comedy OUT TO
SEA. The result is a story that is a pale imitation of THE LAND BEFORE
TIME, which had more endearing characters and more effective humor. In
THE LAND BEFORE TIME, the big reptiles were off to find the legendary
"Great Valley." In DINOSAUR, they are migrating to a similar looking
locale, but this time the lush and peaceful valley is referred to simply
as the nesting grounds.
Still, it's not that the script bombs, but that it fizzles. There are
several nice sections of dialog, and some imaginative characterizations.
But when a Disney film leaves one nostalgic for THE LAND BEFORE TIME,
that's not a good sign. They want the kids to come back and see their
movie a second time, not go rent the competition's videos.
The way to approach DINOSAUR, however, isn't to ponder how good it could
and should have been, but to enjoy what it does best, which is to
recreate the world of the dinosaurs toward the end of their reign on
earth. Best of all is the realism shown in the skin of the dinosaurs,
which has a texture so life-life, that you'll swear they've located real
dinosaur flesh and digitally imposed it on computer generated
wire-frames. This magic extends to all of the textures including those
of the dinosaur's comical sidekicks, a group of lemurs, whose fur can be
seen convincingly blowing in the breeze as the lemurs leap from tree to
tree.
The story concerns an Iguanodon, Aladar (D.B. Sweeney), who is raised on
an island without other dinosaurs by a group of little lemurs. When the
matriarch of the lemurs discovers the newly hatched Aladar, the elder of
the lemur clan, Yar (Ossie Davis), warns them about Iguanodons. "Things
like that eat things like us for snacks," he admonishes them. Zini (Max
Casella), soon to be Aladar's best bud, laughs off old Yar's admonition.
"This monster's got no teeth," Zini points out. "What's he going to do?
Gum us to death?" Soon, Aladar is a thousand times their size, but he
is still his original playful self.
After meteors rain down from the heavens, turning the world into
something akin to a huge battlefield, Aladar and his "family" end up
swimming to the mainland, where Aladar finally gets to meet dinosaurs of
various species, not all of them friendly. He is first chased by a pack
of blood-thirsty Raptors with some really ferocious teeth and claws.
Scariest of all are some chillingly realistic Carnotaurs, which look
like T-Rexs, who roar a lot and eat everything in sight.
This brings us to the issue of the film's rating. Disney's animated
motion pictures are almost always rated G. In order to make the movie
as authentic as possible, Disney allowed the filmmakers to bring
DINOSAURS in at a PG rating. But it is an extremely intense PG that has
significant potential to scare little ones. These Carnotaurs would have
been happy to nosh on little humans, something that the small fry will
easily be able to imagine. And when the meteors hit, it may look like
the end of the world to impressionable youngsters. After all, for the
dinosaurs the event was the start of the end of the line for them.
The body of the story concerns the herd of dinosaurs, as well as
Aladar's lemur pals, migrating to the dinosaur's breeding grounds.
Along the way, our hero finally meets an eligible female, who at first
refers to him as a "Jerkasaurus." The rest of the storyline follows a
formula so cast in stone that it could have been written by a computer.
Maybe it was.
The movie's press kit proudly brags about what a technical tour de force
it is. And rightly so. There were 70,000 lines of software code
written by the "Dinosaur software group," it tells us. Since software
designers use the word "dinosaur" as a derogatory term, the irony of
this claim has a delicious charm to it. Although one can argue whether
knowing the amount of code means anything, it did bring to mind the
technical genius that went into the production of DINOSAUR. Even if the
film has shortcomings, its visuals are nothing short of incredible.
DINOSAUR runs 1:24. It is rated PG for intense images and would be fine
for kids around 8 and up. Parents with kids who frighten easily should
carefully consider whether their children are ready for this picture.
My son Jeffrey, age 11, loved the movie, giving it a full ****. He
particularly liked the computer generated animation. His favorite
characters were Aladar and his lemur friends. He said that he enjoyed
it when the movie scared him a little bit.
Email: Steve....@InternetReviews.com
Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
Jon Popick
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
Disney’s annual kiddie-pic summer extravaganzas are usually pretty sure
things box-office-wise, but Dinosaur is a whole different story. First,
the Mouse House bumped up its customary mid-June release date for the
weekend before Memorial Day. Then they hired a screenwriter with an
extensive background in horror films to pen the story, which has
resulted in Dinosaur nabbing an un-Disney-esque “PG” rating (the same as
Woody Allen’s film, which is being released the same day). Oh, and
there’s also the little issue of recouping the money it cost to make the
film, which has been rumored to be in the $150-200 million range (it
cost $80 million just to build the facility where the film was created).
Kids, of course, don’t give a flying fig about a film's price tag. What
they do care about is seeing cute, cuddly creatures with funny voices
and promotional tie-ins at fast-food chains and toys that they can get
their parents to buy simply by threatening to hold their breath until
they turn blue. And I’m just not sure that Dinosaur is that film. Like
Antz, the creatures in this film are downright unattractive, and if
Dinosaur pulls in numbers much higher than its CG animated predecessor,
you will literally be able to see heads rolling down South Buena Vista
Street.
Dinosaur begins with the breathtaking ten-minute minute journey of an
Iguanodon egg from its mother’s nest to a tree inhabited by a tribe of
lemurs. There’s no dialogue for this segment of the film, which makes
it even more appealing as viewers will be able to fully concentrate on
the computer-generated creatures inserted over real backgrounds. But
once the egg hatches, the ugly things start talking. The head lemur,
Yar (Ossie Davis, Doctor Dolittle), sees the baby Aladar as a dangerous,
cold-blooded monster, but he eventually decides to raise him like a son.
Flash forward several years, where Aladar (D.B. Sweeney, Fox’s cancelled
Harsh Realm) is now several times larger than even the largest lemur. He
watches sadly as the boy primates and girl primates practice mating
rituals, fully knowing that he’ll never find one of his own to fall in
love with. Then a meteor hits, and the world bursts into flames,
leaving Aladar and the surviving lemurs to flee through a Nam-like
flaming jungle, where they run into a herd of various plant-eating
dinosaurs looking for a new nesting ground.
Although Aladar has never even seen another dinosaur, he gets to
experience the full gamut of dealing with his own species, from
bureaucracy (butting heads with militaristic head dinosaur Kron), to
love (Kron’s sister Neera [Julianna Margulies, ER]), to pity (by helping
older, slower dinosaurs Eema [Della Reese, Touched By An Angel] and
Baylene [Joan Plowright, Tea With Mussolini]), to fear (being stalked by
two blood-thirsty Carnotaurs).
Dinosaur will be way too scary for some young kids (several were howling
during my screening, and many families left early). Maybe Disney
thought that the whole running-through-the-burning-forest thing would be
okay because they already did it in Bambi. But here, it’s more like
Hell on Earth. And the Carnotaurs are a little too much. Dinosaur was
co-directed by Ralph Zondag (We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story) and
first-timer Eric Leighton, who previously worked as an animator on the
creepy films James & the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before
Christmas. The script was co-written by Robert Nelson Jacobs (Out to
Sea) and John Harrison, who is best known for his work in the horror
industry (Tales From the Crypt, Creepshow).
Thanks to the cost of producing a CG film, Dinosaur clocks in at a lean
eighty-two minutes and offers no superfluous plot. The voice work is
merely adequate, with Marguiles, Sweeney and Alfre Woodard (Love &
Basketball) particularly unstriking.
1:22 - PG for intense images and violence
Edward Johnson-Ott
Voices of D.B. Sweeney, Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis, Max Casella, Hayden
Panettiere, Samuel E. Wright, Julianna Margulies, Peter Siragusa, Joan
Plowright, Della Reese. Music by James Newton Howard. Screenplay by John
Harrison and Robert Nelson Jacobs, based on an original screenplay by
Walon Green. Story by Thom Enriquez, Harrison, Jacobs and Ralph Zondag.
Directed by Ralph Zondag and Eric Leighton. 82 minutes.
Rated PG, 3 stars (out of five stars)
Review by Ed Johnson-Ott, NUVO Newsweekly
www.nuvo.com
Archive reviews at
http://us.imdb.com/ReviewsBy?Edward+Johnson-Ott
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the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
The press kit for Disney's computer animated children's movie,
"Dinosaur," contains eight pages of cast and crew biographies, nine
pages of credits and 15 pages of production notes. Included in the
copious technical section is one paragraph on the actual story, which
reveals a lot about the filmmakers' priorities. "Dinosaur" is a 75
minute (82 with closing credits) showcase for computer animation, with a
standard issue Disney storyline slapped on. And, despite the jazzy
visuals, it's a surprisingly mundane affair.
Of course, the very young target audience for the movie will love every
minute of it, but then again, they also look at Lunchables as fine
dining.
Set in the late Cretaceous Period, "Dinosaur" chronicles the adventures
of Aladar (voice of D.B. Sweeney), an Iguanodon raised by a family of
frolicking lemurs after his egg turns up on their island paradise. A
meteor shower forces them to flee to the mainland, where they join a
diverse group of dinosaurs trudging across the ravaged land seeking a
new nesting ground. Aladar's insistence on staying with caravan
stragglers like the slow-moving Brachiosaur, Baylene (Joan Plowright),
and the brassy Styrachosaur, Eema (Della Reese), draws the ire of
Iguanodon herd leader Kron (Samuel E. Wright), even though his sister,
Neera (Julianna Margulies), clearly considers the rebellious young
dinosaur to be quite a stud.
Think Disney's "Tarzan" minus the exuberance and "The Lion King" with
less majesty and you'll know what to expect from the retread plot. Think
fuzzy wuzzy and you'll understand the story's philosophy. In the press
notes, Margulies states, "The film has a beautiful message, especially
for younger viewers, that it's so much cooler to help the weak ones than
to go along with the bully who hates everyone and can be mean just
because he's more powerful." The villain of which she speaks is Kron,
and his crime is driving the herd to a safe haven, even if it means
leaving behind those who can't keep pace. Apparently, Disney-think
allows no room for distasteful concepts like survival of the fittest.
But enough carping over plot and philosophy – after all, this is a film
concerned primarily with cute characters and dazzling visuals.
"Dinosaur" strives to raise the bar for computer animation, placing CG
characters in real world settings. The production's first unit shot in
California's Mohave Desert and in Hawaiian botanical gardens, along with
other sites on the Big Island, Maui and Kauai, while the second unit
captured images in Australia, Jordan, Venezuela and the beaches of
Western Samoa. Animators studied light and shadow with great care,
attempting to seamlessly insert their computer generated creations into
real backdrops.
Their success rate varies from scene to scene. Some composite images are
crisp, sharply defined and remarkably convincing, while others have a
creamy, storybook appearance that is far less credible, but still
attractive. The most impressive shots are close-ups where the animators
obviously strained to break new ground. In the past, computer renditions
of water and hair generally ranged from barely passable to flat-out
cheesy, but "Dinosaur" gets them right. For scenes of a soggy lemur, fur
stylist Charles Colladay dealt with both, explaining "To study wet hair,
I experimented at home by wetting down my cats to see what they looked
like. The hair comes to thousands of little points and you can see the
skin in-between. That gave us some direction to go in and we came up
with a hair-clumping tool where we could actually grab a single hair on
the computer and clump a bunch of others to our target hair. We went to
the zoo to study real lemurs, but they kind of frowned on us wetting
them down."
Even though "Dinosaur" periodically breaks new ground, the film suffers
from a been-there, done-that feel. Ads for the film trumpet, "You've
never seen anything like this before!" Apparently, they forgot about a
little feature called "Jurassic Park." When Laura Dern and Sam Neill
first saw a dinosaur grazing in the sunshine, rising on its hind legs to
snatch some leaves from the top of a tree, my jaw dropped as far as
theirs did. I never experienced that sensation during "Dinosaur." I've
no doubt that kids will go wild over the movie, but for this adult, the
grafting of grandiose images to a Sesame Street storyline left me cold.
Scientists theorize that dinosaurs became extinct as a result of Earth
being struck by an asteroid. After sitting through this tepid spectacle,
I wonder if they simply died of boredom.
© 2000 Ed Johnson-Ott
Ross Anthony
Dinosaur
By Ross Anthony
Not quite the realistic Dinosaurs of "Jurassic Park," nor are they the
decidedly caricatures of "Toy Story 2." These Mesozoics are a cute computer
cross between cartoons and muppets.
In the grand opening scene, a fought after dinosaur egg trades hands (er..
ah claws) from one reptile to the next until a pteranodon (bird-like
reptile) drops it on some distant Lemur Island. (Anybody know if primates
and dinosaurs shared the same geological time period?) Anyway, the dominant
male lemur wants to discard this inauspicious scaley baby, but is soon
endeared to it. So, too, was I. Expecting big things from these Disney
people, the sweeping egg-toss sequence didn't quite grab me; and then with
the advent of that inter-species adoption - I sniffed a "Tarzan" copy.
But with the pace of a shooting star, the film changes direction as the
inhabitants of the lush Lemur Island are forced into a hasty exodus. I'll
leave the reason for their flight a surprise, but will say this ... it's
lovely. Absolutely lovely. A fantastically magical, chillingly glowing,
horrifically compelling sequence. It sucked me in like a tar pit (but it
wasn't a tar pit).
>From there the now grown dinosaur (Aladar) and his small pack of chimps join
a herd of other "sauruses" as they brave the dangerous and course migration
to a dreamy nesting place. Aladar exhibits some
out-of-previously-established character, cocky behavior, especially
inappropriate given present circumstances. This oversight could have been
corrected with the addition of a scene or two in Aladar's growing up period.
Kron (the head honchosaurus) leads the pack with an evolutionary Darwinistic
iron fist (er.. ah claw). "Then let the weaker ones die, they'll slow our
predators." Apparently, Darwin had never been to Disneyland. Of course,
Aladar encourages everyone to work together for the common good -- help each
other out. It's kind of hokey, but aside from a few hints at "mating" that's
about all the film has to offer in the meaning department.
But in the adventure and waycool-to-look-at departments - the film boulders!
(er.. ah rocks!)
Dinosaur. Copyright © 2000. Rated PG.
Voices of D.B.Sweeney, Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis, Max Casella, Hayden
Panettiere, Samuel E. Wright, Julianna Margulies, Owen Klatte, Joan
Plowright, Della Reese.
Directed by Ralph Zondag, Eric Leighton.
Screenplay by John Harrison and Robert Nelson Jacobs.
Based on an original screenplay by Walon Green.
Produced by Pam Marsden at Disney (C)2000.
Adult Grade ................................... B+
Kid Grade ..................................... A-
--
Copyright © 2000. Ross Anthony, currently based in Los Angeles, has scripted
and shot documentaries, music videos, and shorts in 35 countries across
North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. For more reviews visit:
http://RossAnthony.com
Bob Bloom
Dinosaur (2000) 3 1/2 stars out of 4. Featuring the vocal talents of
D.B. Sweeney, Ossie Davis, Alfre Woodard, Max Casella, Hayden Panettier,
Julianna Margulies, Joan Plowrightand Della Reese
Disney’s latest creation, "Dinosaur," is a magical meld of digitally
enhanced live-action photography, special effects and computer animated
wonder.
Though a bit ragged on the technical side, the film showcases a simple
story with a moral that the younger members of the audience can
understand and appreciate, plus some heroic and amusing characters with
whom they can relate.
The story is reminiscent of the animated "Land Before Time" of several
years ago: A group of dinosaurs seek a legendary verdant valley
containing enough food and water to sustain them.
"Dinosaur" follows the adventures of an Iguanodon named Aladar (voiced
by D.B. Sweeney) who is separated from his own species as a hatchling
and adopted by a tribe of Lemurs.
Years later, a catastrophic event forces the family to flee and join up
with a herd of dinosaurs searching for a safe nesting ground.
In a sense, the movie is anti-Darwinian. Its message that survival of
the fittest is a brutal misconception, while standing together and
cooperation — the mighty protecting the weak — makes for a more viable
and stronger community, is a lesson the children will easily grasp.
Moreso than the special effects, it is the characters who drive
"Dinosaur."
Besides Aladar, there is his Lemur parents, Yar (Ossie Davis) and Plio
(Alfre Woodard); his best pal, Zini (Max Casella); sister, Suri (Hayden
Panettiere); and the friends they make on the trek, Neera (Julianna
Margulies), another Iguanodon; Baylene (Joan Plowright), an elderly,
dignified Brachiosuar; and Eema (Della Reese), a gruff, but lovable
Styrachosaur.
The movie’s real stars, though, are the various technicians who
recreated the world of 65 million years ago. Though the effects are
sometimes dark and murky, the Disney team has created such
fully-developed creatures, plus some beautiful vistas that you tend to
gloss over the rough spots.
Aided by a rousing score by James Newton Howard, which contains echoes
of a previous Disney winner, "The Lion King," "Dinosaur" is a movie that
will engross the younger set.
One concession I really appreciated is that none of the dinosaurs nor
Lemurs break into song and dance. That would have been a bit too much,
even for an animated feature.
Though it contains some violence, "Dinosaur" is basically a
good-hearted saga, and at a little under 90 minutes, it will hold the
attention of the youngest viewer.
"Dinosaur" is basically a family movie. Adults will find it simplistic,
but they will enjoy it if they see it with their children. And an
entertaining movie with a moral is always a good bet for a family
outing.
"Dinosaur" is not as colorful as "Tarzan," nor does it pack the
emotional wallop of "The Lion King, "but it does provide breathtaking
scenery, the latest in special effects and lovable characters.
You can’t lose with this combination.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette,
IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bl...@journal-courier.com or at
bobb...@iquest.net
Reviews by Bloom, an associate member of the Online Film Critics
Society, are posted on the Internet Movie Database at:
http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom
James Sanford
That phrase used to be fairly commonplace in movie promotion,
but with the truth-in-advertising laws, it's rarely applied to anything
these days. The fact is, after enduring decades of 3-D films,
Sensurround epics, Cinemascope, gigantic IMAX visuals, digital stereo
and even the short-lived Smell-A-Vision, most audiences can't imagine
there's anything new under the sun.
But "Dinosaur" is truly like nothing you've ever seen before.
If your primary experiences with computer animation were "Antz"
and the "Toy Story" movies, you owe it to yourself to take a look at
"Dinosaur," just to appreciate how far this relatively new art has
already progressed. You'll find a styrachosaur with skin that ripples,
lemurs with fur that ruffles in the breeze and bloodthirsty raptors that
move with an almost alarming dexterity. The action takes place against
rich, vividly detailed backgrounds and it's followed closely by cameras
that can effortlessly zoom along the ground, swoop into the sky and
plunge into a river.
The fluidity and gracefulness of this work makes the similar
effects in "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World" seem almost clunky by
comparison; there's even a none-too-subtle jab at Steven Spielberg's
epics about two-thirds of the way through the movie. By the time
"Dinosaur" offers us the sight of seemingly hundreds of homeless
dinosaurs moving wearily across the desert in search of water and food,
it's likely you will have forgotten the creations you're watching are
not real, living, breathing creatures. The five years of work producer
Pam Marsden (a Kalamazoo College graduate) and her team of animators
have put into the film pay off magnificently: The illusion captivates us
completely.
Like "Titanic," "Dinosaur" is basically a very simple tale made
compelling by astounding technology. Since this is, after all, a Disney
film, there's a hero who doesn't fit in with his peers (see "Tarzan,"
"Hercules," etc.), a character-building journey toward self-discovery
(as in "Mulan," "Pocahontas," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame") and a
climactic face-off with a terrifying villain, in this case, a savage
carnotaur with a theater-rattling roar.
The carnotaurs and the raptors don't speak, but everyone else
does, and the script sometimes strains to be reassuringly jokey, one of
the film's few real weaknesses. On the plus side, we are spared any
musical interludes. There's not even an anthem slapped on the end
credits -- hurrah!
The plot of "Dinosaur" revolves around Aladar (voice by D.B.
Sweeney), a compassionate young iguanodon who grows up among a playful
family of lemurs after being stolen from his crib and deposited by a
pterodactyl on a remote island. When his home is destroyed by a
spectacularly rendered meteor shower, Aladar and the surviving lemurs
make their way to the mainland and join up with scores of fellow
refugees being led to a new nesting ground by the surly Kron (Samuel E.
Wright) and his gruff partner Bruton (Peter Siragusa). Like some sort of
prehistoric cult leader, Kron drives his troops mercilessly and demands
complete loyalty, although his sister Neera (Julianna Margulies)
eventually tires of his stern single-mindedness and opts to follow the
more compassionate Aladar.
With less than 90 minutes in which to tell its story,
"Dinosaur" zooms along, maintaining a relatively high level of intensity
for a Disney drama. The vicious attacks by the carnotaurs and the
raptors are guaranteed to get viewers on the edges of their seats and
parents should be warned they are not entirely bloodless. Although
"Dinosaur" isn't the relentlessly scary experience the last half of
"Jurassic Park" was, the movie's PG rating is well-deserved.
The movie cushions the shocks somewhat with the comforting
presence of grandmotherly brachiosaur Baylene, who speaks in the
beguiling British tones of Joan Plowright, and her friend Eema, a
styrachosaur with the earth-mama voice of Della Reese. When one of the
lemurs hitches on a ride on top of Eema, she bellows, "That's just what
I need -- a monkey on my back," and Reese's reading makes the pun much
funnier than it should be.
What will rope most viewers -- especially kids -- into seeing
"Dinosaur" more than once is not the humor, however. It will be the
sheer spectacle of the film, the brilliance of the animation, the
glorious, all-encompassing sound and the thrill of sitting spellbound in
the dark alongside hundreds of other moviegoers while you discover a
wondrous new frontier of filmmaking. Even with the best home theater
system money can buy, that kind of excitement is impossible to recreate
in your living room, and that's why millions will be lining up at their
local theater to savor the "Dinosaur" experience this weekend. James
Sanford
Scott Renshaw
(Walt Disney)
Voices: D. B. Sweeney, Julianna Margulies, Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis,
Samuel E. Wright, Della Reese, Joan Plowright, Max Casella.
Screenplay:
Producer: Pam Marsden.
Directors: Eric Leighton and Ralph Zondag.
MPAA Rating: PG (violence, adult themes)
Running Time: 82 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
For approximately five minutes, the computer-animated DINOSAUR is
undeniably spectacular. The story creeps up without dialogue, following
the fate of one little dinosaur egg from its trampled, abandoned nest
across an astonishing primeval landscape. Creatures of the water nudge the
leathery ovum along in lakes teeming with life; creatures of the air carry
it over plateaus and through verdant valleys. Seven years removed from the
revolutionary screen creations of JURASSIC PARK, I didn't think it would
be possible for the mere sight of digital dinosaurs to seize the
imagination, but it happens in DINOSAUR nonetheless. With its entirely
visual storytelling, DINOSAUR's prologue offers a giddiness-inducing
prospect: an introduction to a lost world as quietly, primally engrossing
as Kubrick's "dawn of man" prologue to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
And then a cute little simian opens its stupid mouth.
I knew going into DINOSAUR that it was a Disney film aimed at kids,
so I can't say I was expecting anything more profound than the story it
ultimately provided. That didn't make its presence any less disappointing.
That story follows an Iguanodon named Aladar (voiced by D. B. Sweeney),
orphaned in true Disney protagonist fashion after hatching from the
aforementioned egg to a family of primitive Lemurs. He lives happily with
his adopted mother Plio (Alfre Woodard), grandfather Yar (Ossie Davis) and
brother Zini (Max Casella) until a meteor shower wreaks havoc on the
lemur's habitat. Aladar and his family find themselves back in the realm
of the dinosaurs, joined with a herd migrating across a decimated
landscape in hopes of finding their nesting ground spared from the
meteors' destruction.
Along the way, of course, conflicts develop. The Aladar clan
befriends and helps a pair of geriatric dinos -- Brachiosaur Baylene (Joan
Plowright) and Styrachosaur Eema (Della Reese) -- much to the
consternation of the herd's proto-Darwinian Iguanodon leader Kron (Samuel
E. Wright, erstwhile Sebastian from THE LITTLE MERMAID). Aladar,
previously isolated from any others of his kind, swoons over Kron's
sweet-natured sister Neera (Julianna Margulies), further provoking Kron's
wrath. There are confrontations with a pack of hungry Velociraptors and
with a pair of equally hungry Carnotaurs (think T. rex, only with even
worse dispositions and devilish horns). There are close calls, narrow
escapes and grand battles.
Yaaaaaaawwn. Disney's animated features have generally been pretty
formulaic, so it's no shock to discover that DINOSAUR features a
by-the-numbers script. This variation, however, is so relentlessly somber
and dreary that there's nothing left but formula. The personalities of the
principal characters are so bland and the vocal performances so uninspired
that the characters threaten to disappear into the backgrounds -- no small
feat considering the overwhelming brown-ness of the desolate
post-apocalyptic scenery. Even the minor characters like Zini and Eema --
those theoretically present to provide a little comic relief -- can't
inject any life into the film. In recent Disney films, the musical numbers
have come off as purely obligatory, but I found myself pleading for a
snappy tune to breathe some life into the film. It's hard to imagine what
young viewers would find to embrace in this grim production, and even
harder to imagine what would keep an adult awake.
There's no denying that the technology involved in the creation of
DINOSAUR is extraordinary, mixing the computerized cast with some
real-world settings so seamlessly that it's virtually impossible to tell
where reality and hard drive overlap. Apparently, however, co-director
Ralph Zondag has become no more adept at dinosaur-driven storytelling than
he was for the limp 1993 animated feature WE'RE BACK! That film seemed
rushed into theaters to capitalize on that summer's Jurassic juggernaut.
This one misses its opportunity to step out of the Spielbergian shadow,
gradually devolving into a series of all-too-familiar set pieces. That's a
sad end to a film that begins with so much promise. Of course no one would
risk millions on DINOSAUR without anthropomorphized animals. Better to
recycle Disney's orphan fetish without a whiff of personality or humor,
its early grandeur slowly but steadily fading into extinction.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 'saur losers: 5.
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Mac VerStandig
1/2 Star (Out of 4)
Reviewed by Mac VerStandig
cri...@moviereviews.org
http://www.moviereviews.org
May 18, 2000
USA Release Date - May 19, 2000
---A copy of this review can be found at
http://moviereviews.org/dinosaur.htm ---
Look kids! It’s a really bad movie!
If there were some way to weigh a film’s quality against its budget, movies
like “The Blair Witch Project,” “Clerks” and even “The Godfather” would
score excellent ratings. On the other hand, movies like “Titanic,”
“Waterworld” and “The Postman” would receive shamefully low grades. But
those infamous three works no longer need to worry about being at the very
bottom of such a list because, in one of the more surprising revelations of
the year, Disney has dumped $200 million on “Dinosaur” – a truly wretched
plague upon the silver screen.
Plot? What plot? Yep folks, Disney seems to have forgotten that they are
what they are today because they used to be in the story-telling business.
“Dinosaur” starts off with a semi-amusing storyline, even though it is
stolen from another Disney film, “Tarzan,” (a creature born to and raised by
the wrong species, in this case a dinosaur and some furry little monkeys
respectively) but then the movie becomes more or less a tremendously
oversized David Mamet play where the protagonists just wander back and forth
contemplating life’s issues. Now, this works quite well with two or three
characters, a simple set and a highbrow audience. But here we have a whole
stampede of prehistoric creatures, no defined setting (is the film in
Africa? Montana? Earth?) and a target audience of tots to early teens.
Imagine sending in the 82nd Airborne to work as meter maids in a small Rhode
Island town - now you get the picture.
But hey, even when Disney fails elsewhere there are always those
embarrassingly catchy tunes to keep you entertained, right? Not here. Nope,
folks – the Mouse House seems to think it has outgrown Elton John. Big
mistake! This leaves the audience with officially no pop-music salvation and
only a mawkish score to distract themselves.
So at least there is $200 million worth of eye candy to stare at for
80-someodd minutes, right? Not exactly (do I feel like a Hertz commercial or
what!). Actually, the 3.2 million hours of work, 45 terabytes of disc space
(approximately equal to 70,000 CD-ROMs) and enough money to pay the
President of the United States’ salary for the next millennium accomplish
very little. Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” has better dinosaurs, Jerry
Bruckheimer knows how to make a better chase scene and Joel Schumacher is
superior in terms of manufacturing a scarcely-lit film. The prehistoric
creatures, although obviously carefully crafted, look too childish and
stereotypical - the good ones are smooth, the bad guys have sharp teeth and
horns while the little ones possess hearts of gold. One early scene with an
explosion looks like a combination of the bomb being dropped over Hiroshima
and Nicholas Cage narrowly escaping being engulfed in a gigantic fireball.
As for the seemingly never-ending thunder and lightning that conveniently
roles around every time something bad happens, it creates more of an “8MM”
type feeling than that of a kids movie.
Further confusing the target audience are a couple of very muddled morals.
On one hand, the film earns major points for encouraging teamwork. On the
other hand, (SPOILER AHEAD) the picture’s hero will ultimately act alone, as
his peers look on, to win the final battle of the film.
There is little doubt that Disney will recover from “Dinosaur” and once
again find itself at the top of the animation kingdom. Actually, they
already have a $75 million visual effects studio that was built for this
movie but will be reusable for future projects. For the mean time, though,
trust your science teacher – dinosaurs are extinct for a reason.