Iguanadon, Aladar (D. B. Sweeney) is raised by a family of lemurs consisting of adoptive mother Plio (Alfre Woodard), grandfather Yar (Ossie Davis), uncle Zini (Max Casella), and younger sister Suri (Hayden Panettiere). When a barrage of meteors destroys their island home and their entire clan, Aladar and his adoptive family are left with no choice but to set out and look for a new home. By chance they come across a herd headed by the domineering Kron (Samuel E. Wright) who makes no secret of his contempt for "weakness", compassion, or altruism. Aladar tails behind the herd with the older dinosaurs and serving as their the crux of their group of misfits as they travel to the last unspoiled place for food and shelter, the Nesting Grounds, while navigating the harshness of the environment and predators that stand in their way.
Released in 2000 and becoming a massive success as the 5th highest grossing film of the year, Disney's Dinosaur underwent a tumultuous development process of around 15 years. Initiated but Robocop and Total Recall director Paul Verhoeven in the mid 80s, the film was intended to utilization the same computer assisted stop motion technology that had brought to life ED-209 in Robocop, Vermathrax Pejorative in Dragonslayer, and the Rancor in Return of the Jedi with a combination of models and mattes to create a dialogue less story that would be framed not unlike a nature documentary. Development was proceeding in fits and starts due to Disney execs wanting a "cute" talking dinosaur movie, while creatives wanted a more naturalistic and gritty approach. Then Spielberg's Jurassic Park happened meaning doing the film in it's original stop motion style was no longer viable, and the film went into development hell while it waited for computers to catch up to the level it would need to render the appropriate assets. The final film while visually arousing and a benchmark for special effects, also feels very restrained from where it wants to be as a result of executive mandates.
The animation of the dinosaurs is very well done. The movie was made using a combination of real life geographic locations across the world with practical effects integrating for terrain deformation, and then overlays of CGI dinosaurs integrated into the real life environments. It's not seamless as there is sometimes a noticeable "break" where reality ends and CGI begins, and some of the rendering and things like fur and feathers is still very preliminary with a noticeable "plastic" quality to these assets. With that said, this was an ambitious attempt for the time and it's still remarkable from a technical standpoint even with the advancements in technology all these years later.
What undercuts the movie significantly is in the execution of its story. The first 7 minutes of this movie are near masterful as aside from some narration the entire sequence is done with dinosaur cries and body language that makes the audience feel like they're watching actual creatures instead of effects. There's real thought given to how these dinosaurs act in a myriad of situations and we're given essentially a tour of this world as we watch Aladar's egg bounce around this world missing all manner of hazards. The opening seven minutes are a great sequence and it really illustrates the underlying issue with this movie in that it was always intended for visual minimalistic storytelling which would be fine.....if the dinosaurs and creatures didn't talk. The problem isn't so much that the dinosaurs talk, it's more that when they talk its clear that they were never intended to as the story is so bare bones point A to B simple that you could watch this movie on mute and still understand what's going on. The rendering of the characters speech also results in a number of "uncanny valley" shots where they'd tried too hard to anthropomorphize some elements of the dinosaurs resulting in some rather unflattering angles. Not only does their speaking clash with the naturalistic style and setting, but the dialogue is horrendous with some rather obnoxious anachronistic dialogue choices and an obnoxiously grating performance by Max Casella best known as Daxter of Jak & Daxter and he's pretty much playing the same character type minus the restraint. There's really nothing else story wise to comment on because as I said it's a straightforward "journey to salvation" narrative well in line with the previous movie of this type, Land Before Time. While the Dinosaurs talked in Land Before Time, it made sense there because the intention was always to make a film themed very much after Bambi and the dialogue was there to put in commentary on prejudice and racism. Dinosaur doesn't have any subtext to it with a very basic "never give up, never give in" message that shows it was a mistake to humanize the dinosaurs because they were never meant to be humanized.
Dinosaur is an okay film that flirts with being a great one. While the animation and cinematography are beautiful with clear thought given into how to incorporate these CGI models with real world settings, and the opening 7 minutes show just how amazing the technology and craft truly are, the movie makes a massive miscalculation by humanizing the dinosaurs which only serves to call attention to how anorexically thin the narrative is. The dialogue is not only pointless often pointing out details that are either obvious or not needed, but it's also obnoxiously anachronistic often times feeling like leftover rejects from the Jim Henson sitcom Dinosaurs.
Released in 2000 and becoming a massive success as the 5th highest grossing film of the year, Disney's Dinosaur underwent a tumultuous development process of around 15 years. Initiated but Robocop and Total Recall director Paul Verhoeven in the mid 80s, the film was intended to utilization the same computer assisted stop motion technology that had brought to life ED-209 in Robocop, Vermathrax Pejorative in Dragonslayer, and the Rancor in Return of the Jedi with a combination of models and mattes to create a dialogue less story that would be framed not unlike a nature documentary. Development was proceeding in fits and starts due to Disney execs wanting a "cute" talking dinosaur movie, while creatives wanted a more naturalistic and gritty approach. Then Spielberg's Jurassic Park happened meaning doing the film in it's original stop motion style was no longer viable, and the film went into development hell while it waited for computers to catch up to the level it would need to render the appropriate assets. The final film while visually arousing and a benchmark for special effects, also feels very restrained from where it wants to be as a result of executive mandates.
The animation of the dinosaurs is very well done. The movie was made using a combination of real life geographic locations across the world with practical effects integrating for terrain deformation, and then overlays of CGI dinosaurs integrated into the real life environments. It's not seamless as there is sometimes a noticeable "break" where reality ends and CGI begins, and some of the rendering and things like fur and feathers is still very preliminary with a noticeable "plastic" quality to these assets. With that said, this was an ambitious attempt for the time and it's still remarkable from a technical standpoint even with the advancements in technology all these years later.
What undercuts the movie significantly is in the execution of its story. The first 7 minutes of this movie are near masterful as aside from some narration the entire sequence is done with dinosaur cries and body language that makes the audience feel like they're watching actual creatures instead of effects. There's real thought given to how these dinosaurs act in a myriad of situations and we're given essentially a tour of this world as we watch Aladar's egg bounce around this world missing all manner of hazards. The opening seven minutes are a great sequence and it really illustrates the underlying issue with this movie in that it was always intended for visual minimalistic storytelling which would be fine.....if the dinosaurs and creatures didn't talk. The problem isn't so much that the dinosaurs talk, it's more that when they talk its clear that they were never intended to as the story is so bare bones point A to B simple that you could watch this movie on mute and still understand what's going on. The rendering of the characters speech also results in a number of "uncanny valley" shots where they'd tried too hard to anthropomorphize some elements of the dinosaurs resulting in some rather unflattering angles. Not only does their speaking clash with the naturalistic style and setting, but the dialogue is horrendous with some rather obnoxious anachronistic dialogue choices and an obnoxiously grating performance by Max Casella best known as Daxter of Jak & Daxter and he's pretty much playing the same character type minus the restraint. There's really nothing else story wise to comment on because as I said it's a straightforward "journey to salvation" narrative well in line with the previous movie of this type, Land Before Time. While the Dinosaurs talked in Land Before Time, it made sense there because the intention was always to make a film themed very much after Bambi and the dialogue was there to put in commentary on prejudice and racism. Dinosaur doesn't have any subtext to it with a very basic "never give up, never give in" message that shows it was a mistake to humanize the dinosaurs because they were never meant to be humanized.
Dinosaur is an okay film that flirts with being a great one. While the animation and cinematography are beautiful with clear thought given into how to incorporate these CGI models with real world settings, and the opening 7 minutes show just how amazing the technology and craft truly are, the movie makes a massive miscalculation by humanizing the dinosaurs which only serves to call attention to how anorexically thin the narrative is. The dialogue is not only pointless often pointing out details that are either obvious or not needed, but it's also obnoxiously anachronistic often times feeling like leftover rejects from the Jim Henson sitcom Dinosaurs.