The Good Dinosaur

So, it looks like Pixar/Disney released another movie, hooray! I finally got around to watching the 2015 movie The Good Dinosaur and I thought I would share my thoughts on it (potential spoilers ahead).

Okay, basically this a great movie because it's simple enough for little kids to understand and it's funny (cute, light humor). I would that the whole movie can be blanketed around one motif/moral,which is: Once you put in your best effort to persevere in life, you can make your mark on the world. The movie sends this message quite literally in the course of the movie.

Of course the movie itself is extremely fictional, I mean really, in Ice Age the humans and the animals can talk, fine.... but in this movie the dinosaurs live like people and the humans live like dogs (and I mean this literally).

The movie starts off with a corn-farming family of dinos, with Poppa, Momma, and their three children. You have Buck the big jock-like one, Libby the clever sister, and little timid Arlo who seems afraid of everything (though I don't know, those dino-chickens are pretty scary hahahaha). Lots of happy feels.

Now everyone in the family in the family except for Arlo make their mark by doing something good on their little dino-farm. Poppa builds a corn silo and puts his mud paw-print (tada literal mark) on one of the rocks along with Momma because they have made their marks already. Then each of the children is expected to persevere at their chore on the farm. Buck got his for being strong enough to rip out the trees to "clear a field" and Libby got her mark for then plowing the entire field. Alro is the smallest and wimpiest of the children, but he too is trying to "make his mark."

Anyway, life is all good on their dino-farm but they seem to have a "critter" problem that is eating their corn crops. Since everyone in the family made their mark in the family except for Arlo, the critter problem is up to him.

The critter is a human boy around 6yo and gets caught in a simple trap and its up to Arlo to smash him like a bug, but alas he cannot commit such a violent act and releases him, Poppa finds out that he let the human critter escape and they run off after him into a storm *cue the Lion King!!!* and as they run along side a river and a mountain, a flood comes and in a tearful goodbye Poppa throws Arlo up a cliff ledge before being swept away.

Change scene to Momma and Alro collecting the harvest onto their back and Mamma falls down from being overworked and 11yo Alro states he will make it all right and he will be strong too (like Poppa *tears*).

Cue critter boy and Arlo meet again where Arlo does the usual "You killed Poppa, it was all your fault" etc. and while rushing him, they both fall into the river (I bet the plot is wonderful for children, I just have seen it all before so at this point, I thought "man they really should put a fence right there on the river-side as it would solve a lot of problems"). Anyway to speed up, they fall and end up lost~

Being alone in the wilderness together, they warm up to each other and have a fun adventure back home to their three-pointed mountain home. We also find out that the human boy's name is Spot (woooow real clever). They also meet some interesting side characters on the way too. The pterodactyls are the main bad guys in the movie and the T-rex (ugh I hate how I can't put an --s at the end of rex, anyway) are surprisingly (no really, I was not expecting it, so it made me pretty happy) buffalo-herding ranchers (and here I thought I had seen it all hahahaha). Really they way they run is super cute/funny, its like the T-rex are running on their own feet, but in a weird side-way sort of way that makes it look like they are horse-back riding ranchers. I can't really describe it, you will have to seen it for yourself :)

Another funny thing I found that I wanted to point out is only in a fictional movie can a 6yo human boy run off and bring back an iguana in his mouth~ I was like WHAT~~~ and then he rips a giant bug's head off with his teeth. Boy, I never knew our human teeth were that strong ;)

Anyway, it's an adventure, Alro overcomes his fears and in the end saves Spot (the human boy, sigh that name though... like pfffft he doesn't even have spots). They also have a touching (another tear-jerking moment) where they show their families and we see that Spot is a little orphan boy who lost his parents while Arlo lost his dad. So they totally bond and we get little teardrops of feels as we look at those family circles~

Continuing on, at the end of their journey, right before they get back to Arlo's dino-farm, They hear (aka the humans howl like wolves?) and then see a family of foxy white-haired with black tips HUMANS with a mom/dad/two kids (boy and girl) --- the picture of a nuclear family---- they come up and are like: oh yeah, we will totally take you in orphan Spot, we will all just stand here together staring at you while you say your goodbyes. 

AWWWW, tear-jerking #3 of them parting ways and Alro goes back home, finally able to put his mark on the corn silo.

Fin.


So yes it's a pretty cute movie, if totally predicable, but totally full of laughs and good feels that the little kids would probably really like (errrr I think it will keep K-5th grade entertained enough, if not just for the laughs). Like it's probably safe to say that kids up to 11yo would like it (afterall, ding, the MC is an 11yo). If the people are Disney/Pixar lovers, they will also probably sit through it well (I know I did, even if I was mentally poking fun of it at times, but all in good spirits). The animation is really pretty too, with lots of beautiful settings and a dash of glowing fireflies on top~

 OH and look at these little character blurbs I found:

We have the MC-Dino

We have the MC-Human

Don't Lion King Poppa, nuuuuuu (TT^TT)

the quarterback brother (though the are the same age)

she has freckles, GASP I didn't notice until now

Wow she really doesn't get many lines

Awww, my favorite bunch of the cast

they so nice too

can you believe this big old softy didn't eat anyone, awww

Ha and here are all the villains of the cast (these gave me a deranged surfer dude kind of vibe)

 and these villains gave me a hillbilly kind of vibe

and this guy gives me the just insane kind of vibe

But really, my villain describing vibes aren't kept to be mean, they are just ... well literally (I guess stereotypically) portrayed that way along with the rest of the cast. WHICH I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH aka child-development and all that. You know, children (really really small children) don't really have the world's gray-zone figured out, they don't understand the in-between stuff. Therefore, I completely agree that they need examples of black and white "good" vs. "evil" as "gray" is literally still too hard for them to comprehend. This movie gives the little kids three examples of "bad" aka bad is:

Pterodactyls -- at first they are nice and helpful as they call you "friend," but alas they then do something violent, and when you start backing away, they are all like "Where ya going, friend?" you are not leaving mwhahaha *the main villains of this movie*

Raptors -- mean people who steal your stuff and start fighting you when you try to take it back

Pet Collector -- I don't even know how to describe this category, those really weird people who talk to talk to themselves and behave off and are probably a danger to themselves and others? Meh, yeah, that sounds about right.

Anyway to conclude, I guess I would say its a 9/10 movie for little kids :)
Also, it's an pretty-okay movie for everyone else, with lots of G-rated humor it's great family movie, might bore the parents a bit though, but not too bad, as the graphics are really nice!    


Thanks for reading <3