Director: Peter Sohn
Writers: Bob Peterson (Original concept and development & Story)
Peter Sohn (Story)
Erik Benson (Story)
Meg LeFauve (Story & Screenplay)
Kelsey Mann (Story)
Peter Hedges (Additional screenplay material)
Adrian Molina (Additional screenplay material)
Is this the worst Pixar movie? For me it is, I mean with Cars it can be considered the worst by the high standards Pixar has set for themselves but at least Cars knew what it was about. It knew it didn't have an interesting idea behind it and it was there to sell toys. The Good Dinosaur, however, doesn't. It had an interesting idea and honestly looked like it was going to be something of substance but it was the most recycled thing I think I've ever seen and that hurts me, Pixar is a great company and it's awful to see this sort of thing come from them. I remember being so excited to see this when it first came out, I hadn't seen any trailers but I'd heard about it and had read very basic story synopsis so I had no idea as to what this would look like or what would happen. Turns out this interesting sounding dinosaur movie from Pixar fucking sucked hard. And I watched it again so I could bitch about it on the internet.
So first of all, I'll say this, the film probably (definitely) blew the majority of its budget on the animation for the nature shots. I swear that, if this was just an animated nature movie, you probably could not tell the difference between life and animation. It's gorgeous, honestly, it really is and I just can't believe that this is animated. The problem with that? Character design on the main dinosaur Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) just...really doesn't fucking fit. It's this bright green thing that just...even I could draw it, and I'm no great artist. In fact, I really can't fucking draw, I'm not all that creative when it comes to drawing, I draw a blank and yet if I wanted to draw a dinosaur, that's something I'd probably come up with and I really expect more from Pixar.
Another problem is how much it rips off The Lion King. When you're watching this, you immediately get the sense that one of the parents is going to get the chop. Unlike with other Disney or Pixar products, you see the parents together and you (mostly) don't see what's coming for them but here, it was just blatantly obvious from the first minute. I won't say exactly how the father dies but you'd swear that it just fucking took the idea of the wildebeest coming for Mufasa and switches it out for muddy ass water. It's also kinda brutal the way the father is killed I mean...you don't see it but the way it just cuts to black as the water hits him is fairly aggressive and in a way, it just kind of comes out of nowhere. The father is just looking his son in the fucking eyes and just gets fucking body slammed by this body of water. It's aggressive and brutal and kinda comes out of nowhere when you think about how sugary sweet this thing started off like.
Speaking of brutality in this film, the boy, Spot (Jack Bright) rips the head off of this bug and it kinda comes out of nowhere. He's trying to give Arlo food and is trying to work out what he'll eat and it's understandable, being an omnivore seeing this huge creature and, I'm assuming seeing larger dinosaurs eating other animals, thinking he'll eat them but of course Arlo turns it all down. Spot then assumes he doesn't know how to eat so...he just rips the fucking head off this thing. Next brutal moment, which is the one that fucking got me. After a devastating storm which wiped out a good chunk of...wilderness I guess, three pterodactyls comes down and seem like they're searching for injured critters to help in the aftermath. Seemingly a nice thing to do right? Arlo thinks so and decides to help them find this cute fucking thing, I mean it looks like one of those fluffy toys with the huge eyes that whenever you go to the zoo/aquarium/Claire's accessories etc you really want one but know it's kind of a waste of money 'cause you're almost fucking 20 and can't be buying yourself cute ass toys anymore. Yeah, one of those things and I swear to God, like, they go to the trouble to rescue this thing but then it just fucking shoves the thing into its fucking throat and I'm trying to Google the image because no words I can think of to describe it will do it justice. I swear it's probably the most disturbing moment in the entire fucking movie. I know I've talked before about it being good for kids to be scared but like I said when I was talking about Son of the Mask: you gotta fucking ease into it, you gotta show that you're heading to dark fucking places. The good dinosaur definitely does not do that. It's brutality just comes right the fuck out of nowhere and like...fuck I can't think of any other way to describe the fucking sick things this film comes out and does. I just found a Youtube clip of the scene I just talked about so I'll drop a link if you've not seen the film yet and have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-XOcRiSUOo
Moving onto something positive, however small it is, the triceratops. He doesn't appear again in the film and it's upsetting because he's just such a fucking weird character that you actually want to see him again. This guy is a little crazy and it seems like he's managed to get himself some friends who go by some fucking weird names.
- Fury. He protects from the creatures that crawl in the night.
- Destructor. She protects from the mosquitoes.
- Dream Crusher. He protects from having unrealistic goals.
- Debbie. Debbie is apparently a bird with a name who comes across to me as a bit of a shit starter.
- Killer
- Beast
- Murderer
- Funeral Planner
- Haemorrhoid
- Frank
- Maniac
- Violet
- Lunatic
My last thing I'll bitch about is the whole "make your mark" thing. In the first third, it seems like an important thing to make your mark in mud on this silo that the father had built to store food in. The way you get to make your mark is determined by you doing something big for a purpose bigger than yourself. At least, that's how it comes across. So how do these dinos make their mark?
- Poppa (Jeffrey Wright) - Built the silo.
- Momma (Frances McDormand) - Presumably pushed out that huge fuck of an egg that Arlo came out of.
- Buck (Marcus Scribner) - Cleared a field of trees.
- Libby (Maleah Padilla) - Prepped the field to sow the seeds.
- Arlo - Made it home alive and well.
Now I'm no big judge on anything to do with doing anything bigger than myself for a purpose bigger than myself but...I think the only one who was even scraping the barrel of that definition was the mother because...fuck did you see the size of that fucking egg? You think childbirth would be horrific, imagine pushing that bitch of an egg out only to then have the tiniest ever dinosaur baby come out of it. Shit, I'd probably be so disappointed if I pushed that out.
That's it, I'm so done with this movie, I hate it, it's scary and not good for kids. This would have been so much better if there was a better character design and it was silent and just showed how these creatures could have gotten along together, evolving alongside each other. This is just such a fucking missed opportunity it makes me sick to think of all that fucking wasted potential in this movie. I hope someone has seen this idea, seen the wasted potential and is working on a movie that will deliver what's promised. A good dinosaur movie. Something I would 100% be ok showing to a child, teenager or an adult.
This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this movie then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
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