High price tags are supposed to impress us, so I guess the more we’re told that Disney spent anywhere from $130 million to more than $200 million to create the reality-meets-computer-graphics kids movie “Dinosaur,” the more dazzled we should be.
I don’t know, though. Once upon a time, computers were as big as houses and cost many millions to build, and now you can get more power in a laptop — so price is a pretty slippery concept when it comes to technology. Plus, with movies the important point is always how the technology serves the story.
Directors Ralph Zondag (a co-director of the animated “We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story”) and Eric Leighton and their Disney team have set out to re-create a prehistoric landscape populated by all sorts of dinosaurs, winged creatures and furry mammals. A fine idea — kids (and many adults) love all things dinosaur, so the more detail, the better.
But somewhere the decision was made to have these fascinating, exotic, supposedly true-to-life beasts speaking Disney cartoon-cute English. Della Reese as a Styrachosaur calling a youthful dinosaur “chile” — stuff like that. Not only do the vastly different dinosaur breeds talk to each other, but other species, like the anachronistic lemurs (shrew-like mammals), get in on the chit-chat, too.
Of course, you expect talking animals in a Disney cartoon; you just may not initially realize that “Dinosaur” is the three-dimensional equivalent of one.
Meanwhile, extensive computer-graphics work has gone into giving the animals complex textures and muscle movements, particularly in their faces. The results are technologically impressive, but as with many CGI effects, I never lost awareness of the effort involved, as though these creatures were being operated by a million invisible puppet strings. The lemurs, especially, look like animatronic teddy-monkeys.
What’s more, the filmmakers have given most of the beasts unmistakably human expressions instead of imagining expressions unique to these species. Is that what we want from a movie called “Dinosaur”? Gargantuan reptiles looking and talking like people?
Until the creatures open their mouths, about 10 minutes in, “Dinosaur” appears like it might be something special. Set some 65 million years ago, the story opens in a sunny countryside where itty-bitty dinosaurs frolic, huge flying bugs soar overhead and a nest of dino eggs awaits hatching.
But then a large nasty dinosaur (a Carnotaur) stomps through the area, and the one intact egg is launched on a dazzling journey that includes plopping into a river (think Moses in “The Prince of Egypt”) and being carried far away by a winged thing. It winds up hatching amid a family of lemurs, who decide to raise him (think “Tarzan” or “The Jungle Book”) on the condition that he be taught not to eat meat.
Jump forward a few years, and Aladar (voiced by D.B. Sweeney) has grown into the equivalent of a teenage Iguanodon, an oversized, hard-bodied plaything for the lemurs. When a meteor shower batters the Earth and sets off a mushroom cloud, you think bye-bye, dinosaurs. But no, the bombardment just sets all of the creatures on the move, and soon Aladar is linking up with a traveling group of dinosaurs, including a female Iguanodon, Neera, who sounds cute (she’s voiced by Julianna Margulies) but looks like just another scaly dinosaur.
The troupe is trekking through the desert to find an oasis, but Aladar and the lead Iguanodon, Neera’s brother Kron (Samuel E. Wright), have different ideas about survival: Kron adopts a before-its-time Darwinian attitude of let-the-fittest-survive while Aladar favors slowing down the group to save everyone, including an elderly Brachiosaur (Joan Plowright) and her Stryrachosaur friend (Reese).
Amazingly, survival is the dominant theme of “Dinosaur” — amazing because this is an upbeat movie. The lesson, reinforced by a schoolmarmish voiceover: Everything works out when everyone works together.
I mean, we are talking about dinosaurs here; one of the reasons they tickle our imaginations is that they’re extinct. To be true to its message, this movie would have had to end with gigantic space ships arriving to carry the dinosaurs to a blissful new colony. (Instead, Disney’s no doubt thinking “Dinosaur 2: Still Around!”)
The real-life backgrounds — filmed in Australia, Venezuela, Western Samoa, Hawaii, California and Florida — are blended to create the distinctive terrain that makes “Dinosaur,” if nothing else, a vivid travelogue. The dinosaurs, thank goodness, never burst into song, although James Newton Howard’s score is awfully vanilla.
The wandering beasts face their share of adversity, including thirst, carnivorous Carnotaurs, falling rocks and internal dissent. One of the niftiest images is also one of the simplest: Aladar grinding his foot into the dry ground to release little pools of water from underneath.
There also are some memorable struggles in a cave, and a climactic confrontation with the Carnotaurs amid the rocks outside. The plot lumbers around quite a bit, but this final dino fight finally gets the blood racing, although it may be a bit brutal for the little ones.
Some kids may love “Dinosaur” — particularly those old enough to take the PG-rated battles yet young enough not to mind the goopy content. (Parents, your guess is better than mine as to how broad an age range that suggests.) The action is easy enough to follow, and the screen is never dull. But for a story that takes place some 65 million years ago, “Dinosaur” is awfully reliant on recent recycled parts.
`DINOSAUR’
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Ralph Zondag and Eric Leighton; written by John Harrison and Robert Nelson Jacobs; edited by H. Lee Peterson; production designed by Walter P. Martishius; music by James Newton Howard; produced by Pam Marsden. A Walt Disney Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:24. MPAA rating: PG (intense images).
THE VOICES
Aladar ……….. D.B. Sweeney
Plio …………. Alfre Woodard
Yar ………….. Ozzie Davis
Zini …………. Max Casella
Suri …………. Hayden Panettiere
Kron …………. Samuel E. Wright
