The Good Dinosaur | Film review - Fun, peril and awe in Pixar's playful comedy adventure

The Good Dinosaur Arlo Spot.jpg
(Image credit: Pixar)
(Image credit: Pixar)

What if dinosaurs had never gone extinct?

That’s the premise of Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur, a playful animated comedy adventure that invites us to imagine that the fateful asteroid that did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago missed the Earth, allowing evolution to take a different course - and allowing Pixar to give us a Western-type tale of pluck and peril with a young dinosaur as its hero.

The Good Dinosaur birds.jpg

(Image credit: Pixar)

Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) is the runt of an Apatosaurus family of doughty pioneer homesteaders, who are busily turning a patch of wilderness into farmland in what appears to be Northwest America. Unlike his spunkier brother and sister, timid, clumsy Arlo doubts he will ever live up to the expectations of his mother (Frances McDormand) and father (Jeffery Wright), but when events strand him miles from home he must learn to master his fears to get back home.

Arlo’s unexpected companion on this hazardous journey is a feral human child he names Spot (Jack Bright), a bristling, bustling creature who scampers about on all fours and howls rather than speaks.

The Good Dinosaur rustlers.jpg

(Image credit: Pixar)

Director Peter Sohn and screenwriter Meg LeFauve put all manner of hazards in the duo’s path, including run-ins with a gang of scavenger pterodactyls and some buffalo-rustling raptors. The latter encounter brings Arlo and Spot into contact with a cowboy-like Tyrannosaurus rex trio whose ornery leader (a wonderful Sam Elliott) provides some of the film’s most amusing moments.

There’s plenty of slapstick fun to enjoy, too, plus the emotional engagement of Arlo and Spot’s growing bond, but the film’s most impressive feature is its awesomely beautiful rendering of the natural world – from majestic forests and raging flood waters to the glittering phosphorescence of a field of fireflies.

Certificate PG. Runtime 101 mins. Director Peter Sohn

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA_HRnQ7SCA

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.