Dinosaur
A Walt Disney computer-animation.
Directed by Eric Leighton and Ralph Zondag.
Aladar (voice by D.B. Sweeney) is a hadrosaur — all you need to know is that he’s good-natured, vegetarian, young but mature, slightly innocent but practical, and has been brought up by comic-relief lemurs. They are driven from their home by a meteor strike and join up with a diverse crowd of (vegetarian) dinosaurs migrating to their traditional nesting grounds. These dinosaurs are suffering from desertification of their habitats and attacks from savage carnivores. (You can spot the carnivores by their spikes and teeth and the way that they snarl instead of talking.) The migrating dinosaurs are led by Kron (Samuel E. Wright) who is a bully and preaches survival of the fittest. Aladar is compassionate and believes in co-operation and, surprisingly enough, is repeatedly thrust into situations where he can apply and succeed with these values. He finds the route to the paradisian nesting grounds, inadvertently shows up Kron’s limitations, and lumbers off into the sunset with a hadrosauress.
Of course, meteors and ecological change were the only hazards the prehistoric world ever faced, in the same way that the Roman Empire was only ever affected by Christians and decadence.
It is clear that, with this subtle allegory, Disney has once again radically redefined the concept of cinema and challenged our notions of the individual and society.
There are four writers credited, the chief culprit being Walon Green, writer, producer and/or director of such films as The Hi-Lo Country, the 1996 Island of Dr Moreau, Robocop 2, The Secret Life of Plants and Solar Warriors (in which an alien explorer is saved and a police-state overthrown by some clean-cut rollerskating teenagers). This CV speaks for itself. Otherwise, the production team seems to be relatively inexperienced. Eric Leighton is a first-time director (he has been an animator in such films as James and the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before Christmas) and Ralph Zondag is a second-timer, following the 1993 We’re Back! — The Dinosaur Story. The presence of these new-comers is probably more due to the medium than the message.
Anyone thinking of seeing this film may well be mainly interested in (a) the quality of the animation or (b) the possibility of keeping their children occupied.
(a) The animations, often cleverly overlaid onto real backgrounds, are quite good, though I don’t think they’re actually more impressive than, say, Jurassic Park. The dinosaurs look their best in distance shots: having their faces reconstructed to facilitate human expressions is almost grotesque and damages the quality of animation. To be fair, if you want your animals to talk and be expressive, it’s hard to avoid this. Some of the cinematography is contrived and indulgent: “let’s follow this pterosaur around while it flies down valleys and swoops under a brontosaurus’ tail — because we can”.
(b) Over 80% of those in the cinema were 4–13 years old — they all seemed to enjoy the film, including the 6 year old I was chaperoning. The characters and plot move through their paces well enough and there are some impressive and amusing scenes. The kiddies are too young to notice or mind that none of this is new or thoughtful. As a school holiday-film it works: if you give Uncle Walt money he’ll keep the kiddies distracted for 90 minutes.
In summary, Dinosaur is watchable but fundamentally inane and predictable. Save your money unless you fall into category (b) or are a real nut for animation and/or dinosaurs.
Now, what’s Aladar going to do about these bloody meteors?
Guy Olding
