Review of The Good Dinosaur (2015) by Wiholke — 20 Jan 2021

In my Cars 2 review, I mentioned that The Good Dinosaur was PIXAR's worst film. After rewatching it, I was a little harsh, but I still don't like it all that much. Coming right after Inside Out, this movie looks like a disaster.

However, it's a perfectly safe and inoffensive movie, just low for PIXAR. One of the opening shots actually made my jaw drop because of how real it looked, which is the biggest praise I can say. Minus the character design, this is PIXAR's most beautiful looking film, it's just a shame that the story isn't all that great.

It's an interesting spin on a "Western-ish" genre because instead of humans being the farmers and cowboys and rustlers it's dinosaurs. The marketing never revealed this information so it was an unpleasant surprise the first time I watched it and probably why I don't have many fond memories with this film.

Now that I have rewatched it I can say that the story works well enough, I just don't like that dinosaurs are the main characters, which leads me to the character design. The movie looks gorgeous, but this clashes with very cartoony dinosaurs and it just does not work for me.

It sucks me out of the movie, which leaves the movie feeling forgettable. The story isn't awful but it sure doesn't help out the poor character design. The only characters I like are Arlo and Spot, but I can't say much else about the other characters because they're so forgettable.

Lastly, I don't think kids would respond well to this movie. Kids love dinosaurs and seeing them like this I feel would be kind of weird for them. It certainly was for me. But there's also a lot of dark stuff that happens in this movie: decapitations, innocent animals being eaten gruesomely, acid trips, etc.

It's strange for PIXAR, and that's about how I can sum up this movie. The Good Dinosaur is definitely PIXAR's strangest movie. However, I will say that after rewatching it, I do like The Good Dinosaur a little more than Cars 2.

But similarly to Brave, I couldn't see myself watching it again.