On one late July 2012 afternoon I had an hour or two to kill at my local movie theater while waiting for some friends to arrive so that we could see The Dark Knight Rises together. To pass the time, I went to see Pixar’s Brave, which had already been in theaters for a full month. This was the time when everyone was penning “Is this the death of Pixar?” thinkpieces, arguing the sky was falling because John Lasseter was no longer solely focused on Pixar and Brave and Cars 2 weren’t in the same league as Toy Story 3, Up and Wall-E. That kind of reaction signaled to me that Brave was not worth seeing, but on the particular July day it was the only movie which worked for my schedule. If not for that, I probably never would have seen it, which is a shame because Brave is a pretty good movie and so is the aptly titled Good Dinosaur. But they’re both too slight to be masterpieces.
That might be Pixar’s biggest sin, really. They couldn’t sustain that improbable run of one masterpiece after another. Given the company’s track record, we expect more than “merely good” Pixar movies. Good movies? Surely you jest. That’s what DreamWorks dreams of. Pixar, on the other hand, is a symbol of all that is good and pure in this world. The film industry has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But Pixar has marked the time. That bouncing lamp logo, those tears, they’re a part of our past now. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh people will come to see a Pixar movie, regardless of whether or not it’s a sequel. People will most definitely come, to infinity and beyond.
Okay, at this point I am just straight up lifting lines from James Earl Jones’ “People will come” Field of Dreams speech. It might not be too far off, really. To some, Pixar has been a shining light on the Hollywood hill, uniquely immune to commercial pressures, routinely producing movies which renew our collective faith in the potential of the art form, often through a combination of new technologies and very old storytelling (such as the CGI silent movie that is the first half of Wall-E). The rest of Hollywood can go to shit, but not you, Pixar. Not you too! Why did you have to make Cars 2 and Monsters University? Why are four out of your next five movies sequels? When exactly did you become so conventional?
I somewhat sarcastically bring all of this up as a reminder of the baggage we bring to Pixar movies. There are perfectly enjoyable animated family movies, and then there are Pixar movies, two distinct categories that only seem similar if you’re not looking closely enough. The moment the line between those two things blurs is the moment we’ve lost something significant. Inside Out was a reminder of what exactly a Pixar movie looks like, but The Good Dinosaur feels more like an enjoyable animated family movie. Oh no! The line is blurring!
However, I walked away from Brave having been entertained, my heart warmed by the simple life lessons of the story and good-natured comedy.
Always remember to love your mom, even when she’s turned into a bear
This past weekend, I had the same experience with The Good Dinosaur.
As you probably know from the trailers, the movie is built off of a simple idea: What if the meteor missed and the dinosaurs never went extinct? It’s a clever premise, an instant hook, but in execution it’s a fairly straight forward western riff with giant herbivores as farmers and large and small carnivores alike as cowboys and cattle rustlers. There are possibly larger scale ramifications of a world in which dinosaurs evolved and humans didn’t, but the movie is more interested in little touches like having animals we hunted to extinction being alive and well and showing how dinosaurs would use their tails, long necks and giant mouths to plow and water corn fields. Stop trying to figure out why only dinosaurs learned how to talk.
We meet Arlo, an undersized, chronically scared Apatosaurus whose two siblings progress over the years and turn into reliable farmers. Arlo, on the other hand, can’t even feed the chickens without getting scared or screwing something up. His father trusts that Arlo will eventually find his way, but even he gets frustrated when Arlo botches the simple job of capturing the creature (a human boy called Spot who has the intelligence of a small dog) which has been stealing corn from the family silo. You might see where this is going…
The story is steeped in the family film tradition of throwing a kid into the harsh, scary world away from home and watching as they sink before learning to swim. At various points, it calls to mind The Land Before Time, The Lion King, How to Train Your Dragon and maybe even Bambi. It doesn’t aspire to the same level of insight into the human existence as something like Inside Out. Instead, it’s a well-told, but simple story about overcoming your fear. There are some moments of surprising beauty and depth, such as when Arlo and Spot bond over their shared family tragedies by drawing holes in the dirt and using sticks to signify which members of their family aren’t around anymore.
There are also several genuinely tense and scary sequences, some of which caused kids in the theater to leave their seats and jump into their parents arms. I can see why. A circling pack of insane pterodactyls signaling their arrival by dipping their peaks beneath the clouds, like some kind of reverse version of the shark fin in Jaws, might have been one of the coolest images I’ve seen in a 2015 movie, but it was probably terrifying to all of those little kids.
But is that it? The movie has a good message about perseverance and overcoming loss. The story is simple, but well told. There are some funny scenes, some scary ones. The two leads are entertaining together, and the emotional moments always land the way they’re meant to.
Actually, yeah, that’s about it. What more do you need? As a recent listener emailed to Mark Kermode’s BBC Radio Film Review show, “Please don’t compare The Good Dinosaur with Inside Out. Comparing these two films is unfair to both. I love all the Pixar high-concept stuff, but The Good Dinosaur represents a return to the simple adventure storytelling of old. It feels like a mash-up of The Jungle Book, Lion King and Land Before Time, which is no bad thing. It more than passes the 6 laugh test, and I cried as if I were cruising at 10,000 feet. If Inside Out represents the future of Pixar, Good Dinosaur is a stunning tribute to the Disney films of old.”
THE BOTTOM LINE
In 2012, I almost didn’t see Brave because all the chatter pegged it as not living up to Pixar standards. If I had let that stop me I would have been robbed of seeing a pretty good movie. Don’t make that mistake with The Good Dinosaur. This isn’t Wall-E nor is it Toy Story or Inside Out. However, it’s still a lovely family film that is worth seeing. Just think twice about taking the really little kids to see it with you. This movie is scarier than the trailers have let on.
THE CRITICAL CONSENSUS
76% on RottenTomatoes: “The Good Dinosaur delivers thrillingly beautiful animation in service of a worthy story that, even if it doesn’t quite live up to the lofty standards set by Pixar, still adds up to charming, family-friendly entertainment.”
