The Good Dinosaur: my review

Overall, a nice pleasant and sweet film, but it was released only a few months after Inside Out which in my opinion is a very hard act to follow.

Visuals were amazing, animation was top-notch as is normal with Pixar. But story and characters just fell flat for me, they weren't deep enough and I didn't feel I knew or cared enough about them.

Like when I saw Brave, my main issue was with the story: It didn't feel like it was taking us on a journey that we haven't been on before or showing us anything new. Someone else mentioned The Lion King and The Land Before Time, which is what this film reminded me of, but those films were better and more emotionally engaging. For me a Pixar film should be overflowing with imagination from the storytellers and animators, showing us something new or a new way of looking at the world. This just didn't do that for me.

Things I did like: The role reversal between dinosaur and human, the dinosaur as the more civilised creature and the human as the more primitive and wild animal. I'm glad the character of Spot didn't speak, we got to see a relationship develop in a more visual way, and they sidestepped the possibility of having some annoying cheesy dialogue between child characters. I did shed a tear or two when they parted ways at the end.

So overall, a good film but not great or groundbreaking. It doesn't deserve too many awards but it doesn't deserve the harsh criticism either.

6/10.