Dec 17, 2011
An orphaned dinosaur leads his adopted family of lemurs and a herd of dinosaurs to safety after a cataclysmic event destroys most of their world. All the while they are stalked by a pack of velociraptors and a pair of huge tyrannosaurus-rex.
Disney rips off the story from The Land Before Time (1988) and borrows the special effects from Jurassic Park (1993), to bring us an average story with good effects (that weíve seen before) and a confusing message. Iím not sure what Disney’s target audience is with this film. The special effects and natural wild life brutality seems much too strong for children and more appealing to teenagers or adults, but the story’s strongly overplayed moral of “work as a team” and “help the helpless” is more apt for young children. While the story isn’t all that original and certainly isn’t complicated, this is still a confusing movie. It almost seems that it was originally written to teach one message, but was then rewritten to teach another (evidenced by all the writers listed in the credits). The film has much more wildlife realism in it than any other Disney film I can remember. But, just as I was sitting back to enjoy an animated view of dinosaur life, the childish morals kick in and the writers have applied the usual human emotions and frailties usually found in cartoons.
Dinosaur is not a bad film; it actually has some very beautiful animation played against real live backgrounds. It even hints at the theory of the great asteroid collision that killed off all the giant reptiles. The problem is that the film doesn’t have focus in its message. It’s not clear if the makers of Dinosaur where trying to broaden their target audience or if they just couldn’t agree whom the movie was for.