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I must have heard of Dinosaur when it came out in 2000, but in the intervening years I had forgotten it so completely that I didn’t even recognize the name when it came up next on my list of Disney animated films. It was Disney’s first CGI-animated film, which perhaps tells you everything you need to know.
The thing that particularly doomed the movie, I think, was the choice to mix CGI dinosaurs with live-action location shots. In an all-CGI movie, you can relax into whatever style the animators have chosen, but having the animated dinosaurs tromp through real jungles and deserts highlights every little flaw in the animation: the way that the dinosaur scales appear just a little too smooth and regular to be natural, the occasional slight exaggeration in the movements (there is a Heroic Moment where the dinosaurs all bellow together to scare off a predator… which is undercut by the faintly comical wobbling of their cheeks as they roar), the peculiarities of the shading are all amplified by the fact that you can compare the dinosaurs to real leaves and waterfalls right there on screen.
Even if the CGI had aged better, however, I don’t think this movie was destined for greatness. It clearly yearns for greatness, and weighed itself down with a noble theme in hopes of achieving it (“What if instead of survival of the fittest, we all… helped each other?”), but in the latter half of the movie every scene - how I wish I were exaggerating - feels like yet another hammer blow designed to drive that theme home. We get it! We get it! OH MY GOD, WE GET IT, PLEASE STOP.
I did greatly enjoy the adoptive dinosaur grandmothers that our hero Aladar accidentally acquires, but sadly even two wryly humorous dinosaur grandmas is not enough to save the movie.
The thing that particularly doomed the movie, I think, was the choice to mix CGI dinosaurs with live-action location shots. In an all-CGI movie, you can relax into whatever style the animators have chosen, but having the animated dinosaurs tromp through real jungles and deserts highlights every little flaw in the animation: the way that the dinosaur scales appear just a little too smooth and regular to be natural, the occasional slight exaggeration in the movements (there is a Heroic Moment where the dinosaurs all bellow together to scare off a predator… which is undercut by the faintly comical wobbling of their cheeks as they roar), the peculiarities of the shading are all amplified by the fact that you can compare the dinosaurs to real leaves and waterfalls right there on screen.
Even if the CGI had aged better, however, I don’t think this movie was destined for greatness. It clearly yearns for greatness, and weighed itself down with a noble theme in hopes of achieving it (“What if instead of survival of the fittest, we all… helped each other?”), but in the latter half of the movie every scene - how I wish I were exaggerating - feels like yet another hammer blow designed to drive that theme home. We get it! We get it! OH MY GOD, WE GET IT, PLEASE STOP.
I did greatly enjoy the adoptive dinosaur grandmothers that our hero Aladar accidentally acquires, but sadly even two wryly humorous dinosaur grandmas is not enough to save the movie.
