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Year:   2000
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
Movie:  3/5
DVD:    2/5

Movie

The first thing that strikes you with this movie is how great it looks. Jurassic Park was all great and all and set standards for realistic-looking dinosaurs. But Dinosaur has dinosaurs that look alive and emote. Nowadays when I think of Disney animation I think of the last few flops and that Disney cut its animation studio in half. Dinosaur harkens back to the old days (of only four years ago) when the Disney animation studio was a force.

This is a movie about Aladar (DB Sweeney), a young dinosaur who, through an improbable journey seen in the opening montages of the movie, ends up being raised by a family of lemurs on their island. Instead of the big ferocious herbivorous dinosaur he is supposed to be, Aladar is a nice dinosaur with ideals and playfulness — a dinosaur of action.

The lemur's idyllic world is destroyed by a crashing meteor. Aladar and his lemur family flee to the mainland. There they meet a great migrating herd, led by dinosaurs like himself. Aladar and family join the herd and join the great struggle to reach the Eden-like destination. Meanwhile Aladar's unconventional ideals jar with the other dinosaurs. Can one idealistic dinosaur change the world?

DVD

The DVD has about 10 minutes of featurettes detailing various special effects, another 15 minutes of rather educational dinosaur facts, and two dinosaur games. One is a matching game where you look for the hidden dinosaur body parts to complete the target dinosaur. The other is a more virtual world where you wander a simple cavern system to find your friends, water, and the exit. Both games are for young kids.

Recommendations

It's a rather typical Disney kids feel-good movie. Although nothing new, it does have good animation and it's a safe bet.
Copyright (c) 2004 Kevin C. Wong
Page Created: March 17, 2004
Page Last Updated: March 17, 2004