39. Dinosaur (2000)

In 2000, Disney released Dinosaur, their first fully computer generated movie; though they had used computer animation for characters before, such as the Hydra in Hercules and the whales in Fantasia 2000, this was the first time that every character was animated using this method. The result was a mixed bag and while the ambition towards the project is admirable, the weak execution is more than a little disappointing. Though Dinosaur still did well, financially, it signalled a change in reaction to Disney pictures that had been building over the last few years and ushered in a period of greater obscurity and financial disappointment; for better or worse, the Renaissance was clearly over.

The animation is, of course, like nothing we’ve ever seen from Disney before and while it’s invigorating to see something new from them, I personally believe that they didn’t really hit the mark with what they were attempting. The animation of these dinosaurs is not bad, all things considered, but very dated; I honestly think the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park look better than this and that was released seven years earlier, but perhaps that was because the dinosaurs were only one part of that picture, while in this film, they’re constantly on screen – because these dinosaurs populate the entire film and are always out in the open, it’s easier to see the flaws. Even so, I don’t think you can really use the “well it’s fourteen years old, of course it looks dated” excuse, not only because of Jurassic Park, but because Toy Story 2, another fully computer animated film, was released the year earlier and holds up a lot better than this; on the other side of the coin, traditionally animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Pinocchio are over seventy years old and still look fantastic. This is likely because instead of utilising stylised computer animation, Dinosaur attempted to make these characters look as realistic and alive as possible; I respect this effort and it still looks quite impressive for the time, but the technology just wasn’t there yet, leaving these dinosaurs looking awkward, unfinished and boring to look at. The lack of detail in the characters’ faces make them look dead eyed and dull; this, combined with the lazy voice acting, creates a similar problem as in Pocahontas, where it’s difficult for the characters to emote visually, putting up a barrier which prevents the audience from forging a connection with them. Even characters that are more facially expressive in their animation, like Zini, just come off as weird and kind of disturbing, as the attempt at broader, cartoony expressions clashes with the more realistic character design. Perhaps this style would work in a different kind of movie, but I’ll get to that later; in this movie, I just don’t think it works.

Gah, get it away, please

The backgrounds, on the other hand, look wonderful, I was so impressed I actually wondered aloud ‘wow, these actually look real! ...Hey, wait a minute...’ My suspicions were confirmed when  I discovered that the backgrounds are indeed, actually real life locations, with the characters just animated over them; a nice idea, but I can’t exactly give the Disney animators credit for backgrounds they didn’t animate. Sometimes the characters don’t really blend in very well with the backgrounds, either, similar to the scenes in Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros which blend traditional animation and live action footage; the characters don’t quite look like they’re really there. Also, despite some beautiful early shots of luscious wildlife, most of the backgrounds in the movie are just boring shots of deserts or mountains; the colour palette is severely limited and while it makes sense for the environment, I can’t help but feel that if this were a traditional, 2D animated movie, they could’ve brightened things up a bit. As it is, the movie is a dull mix of grey, brown and white, with the characters not having much variation amongst each other, either; there’s just no escaping it, this is an ugly movie.

The story is... really boring. I mean REALLY boring, it resembles The Aristocats in that it shows a long journey wherein practically nothing interesting happens, whatsoever. We know that Disney can do this idea of dinosaurs on a long march, searching for a place to survive, as the climax of the Fantasia segment “Rite of Spring” is pretty much that exactly, but it doesn’t work here; the classic Disney style of storytelling which is employed here doesn’t fit with this kind of animation or style. The visuals and landscapes suggest that Dinosaur wants to be a grand, epic movie, that follows a race on the edge of extinction as they travel the world in search of salvation; this is a fine idea, but the generic voice acting, wacky humour, wisecracking lemurs, schmaltzy sentimentality and lines like ‘that kids is what we call a Jerkosaurus’ completely deflate this sense of grandness and severity. It seems the original concept for the movie was more in line with “Rite of Spring”, with no dialogue and a more serious and sombre tone; I wish they’d had the courage to follow through on this, because I think it would’ve made for a much more interesting story and complimented the visuals well enough to make up for the imperfect computer animation. Unfortunately, as it is, the tone of this movie is at best childish and at worst, so utterly confused that it’s very difficult to get a grasp on it.

‘Stay perfectly still, its vision is based on movement!’

The story is déjà vu, as it’s yet another tale of a child separated by his parents, raised by another race or species, then growing up to feel like an outcast who just wants to belong. We have seen this far too many times, especially in children’s movies, especially in Disney children’s movies and especially in Disney children’s movies that were barely out of theatres before Dinosaur plodded into them – this was released only a year after Tarzan, which has the exact same basic premise, as well as a similar kind of environment for certain sections of the movie and a focus on action, leaving Dinosaur feeling completely redundant. The rest of the movie is just a big walk through a desert to the end; it’s kind of like a road movie where nothing happens – perhaps even less than The Aristocats! – they never find anything interesting or meet anyone new, every stop along the way is just the same scene of the bad dinosaur asking the herd to move, the old dinosaurs looking tired and the good dinosaur saying they have to slow down. It’s just the same thing over and over again for almost an hour straight and even when they do finally reach their destination, there’s still another tedious action sequence to watch, which at this point feels like cruel torture, as you’re begging for the movie to just end already. Though Disney movies rarely have strong or complex narratives, this one is just way too simplistic, even for them – there is barely any plot progression whatsoever, it's just a single idea stretched out over eighty minutes and it gets old very fast; like the dinosaurs themselves, this idea is dead on arrival.

The characters are almost not even worth discussing, rarely have I seen ones as transparent and unimaginative as this, it almost makes Pochaontas’ cast look interesting (okay, maybe not that bad). I know I’ve said it before about others, but Aladar may very well be the most boring Disney protagonist of all time, this guy just has NO personality beyond being a nice guy; he’s worse than Hercules, or Oliver or any of the other boring heroes and unlike them, he doesn’t even have any entertaining side characters to support him. Aladar’s sidekick is voiced by Max Casella, famous for voicing Daxter from the Jak and Dakter video game series, a small, furry, wisecracking animal with an attitude. In this film, Casella plays Zini, a small, furry, wisecracking animal with an attitude. Hrmm.  Zini is “The Hooter” for sure, if that’s even possible in a movie where none of the characters are really likeable; he’s the typical wacky sidekick: annoying, goofy, constantly throwing out stupid one liners and constantly screwing up. Zini manages to be unbelievably annoying, even though he barely does anything for the whole movie, quite frankly, it’s kind of impressive. The rest of the lemur family are a dull collection of “adopted family” stereotypes – the stern, but secretly caring father, the kind and understanding mother, the sweet but mischievous sibling, they’re not worth discussing any further. Kron is a typical hot-head who wants everyone to listen to him and is threatened by Aladar; again, it’s something we’ve seen a million times before, except the film doesn’t really allow him to go all the way and be an antagonist, he’s just kind of a jerk. This could’ve been very interesting if Kron was played as a tragic villain, who has good intentions but is turned to evil, who is not necessarily “evil” but just has a different and perhaps harsher ideology than our hero, or a villain who eventually realises the error of his ways and grows as a character; all of these are pretty rare in Disney movies, so any of them would have been cool to see. Sadly, Kron is just a jerk from beginning to end, lacking in the theatrical flair of more obviously evil villains and lacking the engaging moral ambiguity of more complex villains; the writers are just too afraid to push him to any extreme, so he ends up lost in the middle, boring and forgettable.

‘I love you Simba’

‘Uh, it’s Aladar’

‘Yeah, whatever’

Neera is basically just Nala from The Lion King – her name is even kind of similar! – except, impossibly, even less developed. Like Nala, she’s nice and a little “sassy”, teasing the hero a little, but that’s all there is. Her and Aladar’s relationship has got to hold a record for the least developed in Disney history; honestly, even Snow White and the Prince had more than this, the two barely get more than one scene together before they’re suddenly having kids at the end, it’s so incredibly lazy, even for a Disney flick. Baylene and Eema are a humourless double-act, with Eema being a sassy old woman and Baylene being a dainty old woman; I suppose it’s something different to have elderly women play such central roles in a Disney movie, but this novelty quickly wears off and either way, they just aren’t funny. This is probably the weakest collection of characters in any Disney movie; I’m sorry to keep making those kinds of sweeping statements, but I don’t know how else to express it, there’s really nobody to latch on to or feel any emotional connection to here, none of them are interesting in the slightest. The film constantly tries to make you care about this big struggle for survival and want to see everyone make it out okay, but when you don’t care about any of the characters, why should you care about their struggle? When the entirety of your film is based around characters trying to make it home, failing to make the audience care about the characters is effectively the biggest mistake you could ever make.

The biggest problem with Dinosaur is that it just feels amateurish – while I’m sure the visuals were technically impressive at the time, they look ugly and unpolished now and, personally, I remember being underwhelmed by them back in 2000 as well, especially in comparison to the work of Pixar, which looked great then and still does now. The story is incredibly simplistic, almost completely lacking in meaningful conflict or any sense of variation, it’s the same boring stuff for eighty minutes. The characters are the worst in Disney history, completely undeveloped, barely utilised and just plain dull. The humour is lazy, the action is boring and the emotion is vapid and artificial, it just feels like this movie was in the hands of a bunch of people who really had no idea how to make a movie. Despite some high ambitions, Dinosaur is a failure in every sense of the word.


3/10

Next Week: The Emperor’s New Groove! 

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