Dinosaur
Maybe it's just the Barney hater in me, but I prefer my dinosaurs without
dialogue. Had Dinosaur kept mute, it might have been a terrific 30
minute IMAX movie, with its state-of-the-art CGI opening sequence introducing
the eldritch landscape and life forms of the Cretaceous period, or later
re-creating with terrifying beauty the cataclysmic crash of a meteor.
Presumably it's the one that did in the big guys some 65 million years ago, but
it barely spoils the afternoon of Aladar (voiced by D.B. Sweeney), a baby-faced
iguanodon who's taken in as an egg by a clan of uppity lemurs. With his adopted
family riding his back, Aladar hooks up with a motley herd of survivors
crossing the blasted terrain for "the nesting grounds," a promised land
reminiscent of The Prince of Egypt. Leading the herd is Kron (Samuel E.
Wright), a hard-ass iguanodon whose Darwinian philosophy of survival of the
fittest and submission to fate clashes with Aladar's new-age platitudes about
cooperation and self-actualization. You'd think that after going to the trouble
of giving these prehistoric creatures voices, Disney would at least throw in a
few good songs or some funny jokes. But this $200 million Dinosaur is
tuneless, humorless, and devoid of charm, another sign that such movie virtues
as character, plot, and point are becoming extinct.
-- Peter Keough
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