Review of The Good Dinosaur (2015) by Jeremyspears — 29 Mar 2020

So I never really felt the urge to watch this movie as I'm not really interested in dinosaurs and the promos for the movie didn’t look too interesting to me. Today it was recommended to me on Disney Plus so I decided to watch it and damn I did not expect to like it this much.

One thing that was pretty unexpected was the role distribution. I expected for Arlo (the dinosaur) to be more like an animal that can’t talk and is treated like a pet and the boy, Spot, to talk and teach him things but it’s the exact opposite. Arlo can talk, while Spot doesn’t say a word and behaves like a dog. That was quite a suprise and a nice change since it’s usually always the other way around in movies like this.

The next thing that I want to point out is the incredible animation. The animation is so good, the landscapes literally look real. Especially the water impressed me. Of course, the characters look more cartoonish because they aren’t supposed to look too realistic and are supposed to stand out but damn the landscapes and backgrounds? Beautiful.

The plot reminds me a lot of "Finding Nemo" in some parts. A little boy who is not that brave and is different than the others gets lost and has to find his way back home and he gets help from others and finds new friends but also meets bad people along the way. Of course, a parent also dies while we’re at it (Arlo's father). So the plot is pretty predictable. Only after a few minutes I already knew that his father would die and then he did exactly in the moment where you'd expect him to die lol. That’s one negative thing, the fact the plot is so predictable. Another bad thing is the way that the animals eat each other. I know it’s part of nature and I‘d be okay with it if it wouldn’t happen over and over again. They’ve overdone it with the killing scenes in my opinion. The scene were Spot rips the head off of an insect can’t be good for children. Otherwise, I thought the movie was beautiful. I cried three or four times throughout the movie. I love the way that Spot is used in this movie. He doesn’t speak and has less screen time than you'd expect but he’s so much more than just Arlo's friend or sidekick. He’s kind of a metaphor. He steals the food on the farm and Arlo's father wants him to kill Spot. Arlo can’t do it because he’s too afraid of Spot. Arlo's father wants to help him beat his fear though and to do his job so they follow Spot and that’s when Arlo's father dies. After his father's death, Arlo makes Spot responsible for his dad‘s death and wants to kill him the next time he sees him. They both get carried away by the stream and that’s when their journey to find their way back home begins. On the way they face a lot of tough and dangerous situations and save each other multiple times. I’m gonna stop describing the plot and come to the point. What I‘m trying to say here is that killing Spot was Arlo’s job to get his mark and become brave but in the end, Arlo faced his fears and Spot was the one that helped him become brave. I can’t really describe it better than that and I‘m probably not making any sense but yeah, Spot has a very important role here. So all in all, "The Good Dinosaur" is a beautiful, extremely well animated movie, which I did not really expect but I like to be suprised. There are some funny scenes but also some extremely sad scenes that‘ll make everyone cry. The ending is pretty abrupt but still a full circle moment that made me cry.