This week’s Disney film is Dinosaur.
The film premiered in 2000 and was a financial success. I was not one of the multitude of movie viewers to see this film 14 years ago, and thus I in no way helped to make it a financial success. This movie was decidedly off my radar. I never saw it. I don't even remember hearing much about it. At the time though I'm fairly certain that I was not interested in dinosaurs. At all.
Not to say that I'm hugely in to them now... But they definitely pique my curiosity. It may be that I finally beheld the wonder of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park. (Love that movie! Don't know why! But I do!) So much so that I even read Michael Crichton's novel on which the movie is based. The book is even better than the movie! Still can't explain why I enjoy it so much...
So with this new openness to the mysterious beings of dastardly extinction... I was still not excited to see this Disney film. I honestly had no prior concept of the plot, characters or general theme of this film: Dinosaur. I wish I could say that I was pleasantly surprised and that this film owns up to all that is Disney greatness, but I can't.
Dinosaur tells the story of Aladar, an iguanodon (rather large herbivore, but much smaller than a brontosaurus) raised by lemurs. I kid you not. Lemurs. Small monkey-like, leaping mammals. Oh Disney. Who came up with this plot?! Alas, the island where Aladar and his lemur family lives is destroyed by asteroids or meteors or... something like that. He and 4 lemurs survive the destruction of the island and swim to the "mainland?" There they meet up with a multi-species herd of dinosaurs who are all traveling to the nesting grounds in hopes that the area is still thriving. Aladar quickly befriends the oddballs of the group (the old and slow), butts heads with the leader of the herd (Kron), and starts crushing on a lovely lady iguanodon (Neera). Oh. And two ravenous, carnivorous Carnotauruses (like a T. Rex, but not a T. Rex) are hot on the trail of the migrating herbivore pack.
I'm not really sure what to say about this film. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be? Though that hardly seems like praise. I was discussing this film with a friend and she mentioned that it showed Disney's creativity and innovation. Which it does. The film is a mix of computer-generated characters set against actual live footage of real settings. To me it just made the dinosaurs look all the more fake, but at the time and even now it still shows a certain ingenuity. I will say that the movie poster is cool. But in terms of the whole movie...
I didn't really fall in love with any of the characters. Aladar is a decent hero, but there's nothing about him or the story that tugs at my heartstrings. Also, I didn't find anything in the film particularly funny. And there's no music. So to sum up, we have zero Disney great characters, zero Disney music, zero Disney humor, and zero Disney heart. Like I said earlier, I think the best thing I can say is that the film wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
These post Disney Renaissance films are going to be an interesting part of this film journey. It's pretty impossible to compete with the Disney greatness of the nineties, but we shall see. Hopefully there will be some good surprises along the way. Dinosaur does not happen to be one of them.
On that note, I'll leave you with a Disneyland-reference Jurassic Park quote:
John Hammond: All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1955, nothing worked!
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but, John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.
Coming Up Next: The Emperor's New Groove
