Atrocious film

I can't even begin to express how disappointed I was in this movie.

Understand, I loved dinosaurs growing up. Before Jurassic Park, before Calvin and Hobbes, I was already into dinosaurs. I knew all the Greek and Latin names, knew geologic time, read books on the subject, avidly visited museums, and was seriously considering a career as a paleontologist, so I was the perfect audience for this film.

What a travesty.

Instead of telling a great story about actual dinosaurs, it simply uses the characters to spin a politically correct lecture about how "survival of the fittest" is bad, and being oh-so-caring is good.

I shouldn't have been surprised. This movie comes from Disney's "preachy" era, marked by many terribly politico-moralistic films. Nevertheless, the message is grating.

And it ruins the film even on a plot level. The contrivance of the "good" dinosaurs miraculously finding their way to the nesting grounds through a short tunnel, when the rest of the herd travels miles and miles to get there, doesn't pass the believability test.

But that's not the worst of it.

The climax, in which the herbivores somehow chase away a carnivore dinosaur simply by bellowing at him is so ludicrous, it's self-parodic. I mean, for heaven's sake, they're all craning out their necks at him, practically begging him to attack. All he'd have to do is snap down on their necks one by one, killing them with no fuss whatsoever.

At least, maybe, if they'd shown the herbivores trying to stampede him, I could see him being a bit wary. But just bellowing and sticking out their necks? The idea that he wouldn't simply snap their necks like so many tree branches doesn't pass the laugh test. He towers above them. He's within striking distance. They're not even presenting their flanks to him but their necks.

Something so utterly implausible completely ruins the picture.

Beyond that, the characterization was quite thin, and the way the "survival of the fittest" leader was being set up to be dethroned was so blatantly obvious that it made the film a chore to watch.

Such a shame.

The place to see Disney tell a GOOD dinosaur story is still the Rite of Spring segment in Fantasia.