It’s nice to be back,.
In 2000, Disney released their first hybrid-CGI movie done
without the help of Pixar. Dinosaur
was the most expensive film of the year and while it was a financial success,
it received mixed reviews. Starring D. B. Sweeney, Ossie Davis, Samuel E.
Wright, Max Casella, and Alfire Woodard, it was retroactively added into the
Disney canon.
Aladar (Sweeney) is an Iguanodon separated from his family
as an egg. He was found by a family of lemurs who adopt him on an island. When
he grows up, meteors destroy the island and the family makes their way to the
mainland. There, they join a herd migrating to fertile lands through a desert
with dangerous terrain and predators.
The visuals of this film are fantastic, an incredible mix of
photography and computer generated animation. It makes great use real locations
for the backgrounds, shot in Canaima National Park in Venezuel and Angel Falls.
The entire opening scene was used for the theatrical trailers and did well
showing us just what we were going to see for the entire hour and a half.
Unfortunately, the visuals are the only good part of the film.
The story is boring and doesn’t do much more than give us
the story of Moses with dinosaurs. Granted, there’s nothing new and original
after thousands of years of storytelling. But it could at least try and make it
more interesting that DinoMoses.
None of the characters are very interesting either. They’re
all completely one-dimensional. Aladar is the gentle hero, Zini is the zany
sidekick, Kron is the hotheaded leader, and Neera is the love interest. They
don’t really have any character other than that. And the romantic subplot
between Aladar and Neera is rushed even more than your average RomCom.
This could have been a much better film, but when the entire
thing tries to ride on the coattails of the visuals, everything else is going
to suffer. #54
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