Dinosaur (2000) - 100 Years of Disney Animation
Later in 2000, Disney released Dinosaur. It’s honestly a bit debatable if this movie should even be included in the Walt Disney Animation Studios catalog; technically, it was made by another division at Disney called the Secret Lab. However, this was the only movie that department ever made, and it was considered an offshoot of the animation studio, so I guess this movie barely counts. Because of that, this is actually the first movie from Walt Disney Animation Studios to be fully computer-animated…well, sort of. See, this movie used the then-innovative technique of placing computer-animated characters against live action backgrounds. Originally, the movie was supposed to be made in stop motion, but after the release of Jurassic Park in 1993, Disney decided to delay the film until they could create the dinosaurs with computer animation. The results are pretty impressive for the time, although it’s sadly pretty obvious that the dinosaurs are computer-animated, since the textures and lighting feel a bit off. But still, considering this movie is over twenty years old, the animation has aged surprisingly well. In addition, the backgrounds give us some great scenic shots, especially in the opening sequence.
Unfortunately, that’s one of the only noteworthy aspects of this film. While I hesitate to call Dinosaur a badly made film, it is extremely boring and forgettable. The plot is your standard “finding a new home” narrative that we’ve already seen in plenty of other movies (including, ironically, The Land Before Time), and this movie doesn’t really put an interesting spin on it. The characters are similarly uninteresting, including the main character Aladar and his love interest Neera. These characters and most of the side ones have little to no personality behind them, though at least they aren’t annoying. That’s more than I can say about Aladar’s adoptive lemur brother whose name I can’t even remember. His whole personality is basically being horny and always trying and failing to impress girls. This gets annoying pretty quickly, and the character ends up feeling out of place and unimportant to the plot. I should also point out that the dinosaurs weren’t originally supposed to talk, but Eisner convinced the team to have them talk anyway so the movie could be more marketable. But honestly, the movie would have been so much better and more interesting if the characters weren’t talking all the time. Thanks, Eisner.
But another aspect that does stand out in this movie is, oddly enough, the score, composed by James Newton Howard. It’s pretty rare for a film’s score to be the best part of it, but honestly, Howard did an amazing job, turning out a sweeping, epic soundtrack that is probably better than this movie deserved. I honestly had a hard time with this review, because there just isn’t much to talk about with Dinosaur; despite some impressive visuals for the time and a surprisingly great score, the film’s unoriginal story and bland characters make it an extremely boring experience. Sure, it has some decent qualities, but the problems I listed aren’t enough to make the experience worthwhile.
Next Review: The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)