The Good Dinosaur

Don’t let that title fool you: The Good Dinosaur isn’t about the scaly mon­sters that stomped the earth 65 mil­lion years ago; it’s about Earth itself. Where Inside Out took us inside the human mind, Pixar’s 16^th fea­ture is a mon­u­ment to Moth­er Nature, every pho­to­re­al­is­tic frame drink­ing in the awe­some majesty of the film’s Pacif­ic North­west set­ting, from its dense forests and vast plains to its wild rivers and rag­ing volcanoes.

Far from being a sani­tised dino­topia, this is a liv­ing, breath­ing, hos­tile world in which all crea­tures great and small are bound by the immutable laws of nature. Indeed, nature is the chief antag­o­nist in this out­ward­ly con­ven­tion­al tale of a timid young Apatosaurus named Arlo (Ray­mond Ochoa), who embarks on an epic adven­ture after becom­ing sep­a­rat­ed from his fam­i­ly. The dis­tract­ing­ly sump­tu­ous cin­e­mat­ic vis­tas that back­drop Arlo’s episod­ic jour­ney make Par­adise Falls look about as appeal­ing as tak­ing a dip in a bub­bling tar pit, but cru­cial­ly, for all that many of the dinosaurs he encoun­ters mean him harm, it’s the ele­ments that pose the biggest threat to Arlo and his fer­al cave­boy side­kick, Spot (Jack Bright).

In this alter­nate time­line of the uni­verse, the aster­oid that wiped out the dinosaurs missed, and man and beast have come to cohab­it the plan­et in near per­fect har­mo­ny – the twist being that while dinosaurs have acquired lan­guage and man­aged to cul­ti­vate the land through the use of crude tools, humans scav­enge and scam­per about on all fours. Ear­ly on, we wit­ness Arlo’s par­ents teach him about the impor­tance of mak­ing your mark, but despite con­stant encour­age­ment from Pop­pa (Jef­frey Wright), it’s clear to all con­cerned that Arlo doesn’t have what it takes to sur­vive in this per­ilous envi­ron­ment. When Arlo is sud­den­ly forced to go it alone, his chances of return­ing safe­ly home to the Clawed-Tooth Moun­tains look fate­ful­ly slim.

Just as life finds a way, so Arlo must face his fears. Yet it tran­spires that Arlo isn’t the only one who is both over­awed and intim­i­dat­ed by his nat­ur­al sur­round­ings. The fur­ther Arlo ven­tures, the more appar­ent it becomes that the dinosaurs’ con­tin­ued exis­tence in this post-Cre­ta­ceous peri­od is tak­ing a psy­cho­log­i­cal toll. It’s as if being locked in a state of sus­pend­ed evo­lu­tion has induced a wave of mass hys­te­ria, giv­ing the film’s mid­dle act an unex­pect­ed­ly sur­re­al under­tone. From a strung out Styra­cosaurus, apt­ly named For­rest Wood­bush (voiced by direc­tor Peter Sohn), to a group of storm-chas­ing Ptero­dacty­lus, which instant­ly call to mind a qua­si-reli­gious cult, each sup­port­ing char­ac­ter posits The Good Dinosaur as a free­wheel­ing ode to the LSD-infused Dis­ney ani­mat­ed fea­tures of yore.

By the time Sam Elliott shows up as a long­horn-herd­ing, curi­ous­ly masochis­tic T‑Rex named Butch, the film has shift­ed firm­ly into John Ford coun­try. What Pixar have served up here, then, is a pre­his­toric psy­che­del­ic west­ern filled with the kind of off­beat larks you don’t expect to find in a con­tem­po­rary kids’ movie. It’s a film of sim­ple plea­sures with an uncom­pli­cat­ed mes­sage – despite its eco­log­i­cal theme, there’s no urgent social com­men­tary to chew over à la Wall‑E, though the pair would cer­tain­ly make for an inter­est­ing dou­ble bill – that invites us to gath­er around the camp­fire and then pro­ceeds to slip a shot of con­cen­trat­ed pey­ote into our drink. Inevitably, the trip doesn’t last long, but for a brief glo­ri­ous moment we’re remind­ed of the studio’s capac­i­ty for good clean sub­ver­sive fun.