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Review: Disney rules with stunning, animated 'Dinosaurs'
(CNN) -- Good news, bad news. The bad? The animated creatures in "Dinosaur" have itty-bitty lips that allow them to talk. It's a bit strange. The good news? This is not a musical. Singing dinosaurs would have been way too much. But that's just nitpicking. Visually, you've never seen anything as spectacular as "Dinosaur," Disney's latest animated feature film. It opens nationwide on Friday.
To quote from the film, "Sometimes the smallest things can make the biggest changes of all." True enough. Small things, like the 1.1 million hairs individually animated on each of the dozens of lemurs that appear in this film, or the amazingly realistic jiggle of skin on the dinosaurs as they lumber along, are the little items that make for a big product. If the devil is in the details, then this is one devilishly delightful film. A new level of animationThis movie's debut shows that the standard again has been raised in the world of computer-generated images. It manages to seamlessly pop computer-generated dinosaurs onto real-world backgrounds, and the results are breathtaking. This was no low-budget, quick flick. The filmmakers used backgrounds shot on location in Jordan, Samoa, Hawaii, Australia, Venezuela and the Mojave Desert. Then more than 900 people, using hundreds of specialized software programs, spent six years populating a world with primal creatures never before seen outside of museums or Steven Spielberg's films. The film's adrenaline rush begins almost immediately. The earth shakes and trees tumble as a terrifying carnotaur, the dino of all dinos, attacks a peaceful group of iguanodons that are nesting and tending their unhatched dinosaur eggs. One egg survives the monster's attack, only to be swept up by a flying pteranodon that takes it on an sweeping journey through some of the most awesome scenic locations on earth. But all journeys must end, and the egg's concludes when it falls from the creature's grip and lands in a group of cute-as-buttons lemurs. This is where the storyline becomes standard-issue Disney -- that is, assigning human emotions to animals and giving them the gift of speech. They speak English, of course. Paradise threatened
The egg hatches, the dinosaur Aladar (voiced by D.B. Sweeney) emerges, and he's immediately adopted by a family of lemurs. Plio (Alfre Woodard) is the family's matriarch, while Yar (Ossie Davis) is the stubborn head of the clan. Zini (Max Casella), Aladar's best buddy, and Suri (Hayden Panettiere), the family's feisty daughter, complete this tight-knit group. In the next scene Aladar is grown and frolicking with his family on their island paradise. But the idyll does not last long. A meteor shower streaks across the sky, signaling the beginning of the end for dinosaurs on earth. Aladar is ignorant of this and proceeds to save his adopted family, taking them to the mainland in a highly dramatic scene. But things are no better there, where mass destruction stretches in all directions. They join a group of rootless dinosaurs -- all of them apparently vegetarian -- on a trek across the wasteland in search of some fabled nesting grounds.
Aladar literally has a monkey on his back -- many of them, in fact -- as his primate family comes along. They must battle various vicious meat-eating reptiles determined to make them into lunch before they can reach their final destination. Nature? Or nurture?Herein lies the moral of the story. A moral? Of course! This is a Disney movie. Aladar has been raised with mammalian values that include compassion, adaptability and working as a group for a common good -- a case of monkey see, monkey do. Or, to be more accurate, dinosaur see monkey do, dinosaur does, too. It's the ultimate answer to that age-old question about the power of nurture over nature.
However, his fellow dinosaurs were raised on the survival-of-the-fittest principles of social Darwinism. They're led by a ferocious iguanodon named Kron (Samuel E. Wright), whose sister Neera (Julianna Margulies) provides the love interest for our hero. Kron drives his group of desperate dinos without mercy. Aladar, on the other hand, is concerned with the stragglers who can't keep up, including the stately Baylene, (Joan Plowright) and the good-natured Eema (Della Reese). This battle of wills between Aladar and Kron takes center stage as the story sweeps toward its predictable, and happy conclusion. Yes, it's happy. Yes, it's predictable. Yes, it's Disney. "Dinosaur" opens nationwide on Friday. Parents, take note: This film is rated PG because it contains some violent scenes that are graphic, believable and intense. 84 minutes. RELATED STORIES: Monstrous Tyrannosaurus rex debuts in Chicago RELATED SITES: Official 'Dinosaur' site |
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