Pixar's latest animated offering, "The Good Dinosaur," made its way to theaters on November 25, and the reviews are in.
A good number of reviews - you could say pretty much over half of them - had said that the film is "good... but." It appears most of the feedback for the flick got stuck in the territory between "excellent" and "so-so." It's not bad, but it's not 5 stars either.
Vox probably said it best when it declared the movie a "gorgeous disappointment," considering that Pixar films are highly anticipated to be very good.
"Even though Pixar and the prehistoric era should have been a natural fit, 'The Good Dinosaur' is hollow on a storytelling level, mostly cobbled together from other, better sources," Vox's Todd VanDerWerff pointed out. "It feels like a patchworked compilation of a dozen screenplay drafts."
Interestingly, The Verge's Tasha Robinson also said something to that effect.
"'The Good Dinosaur' feels at all like a letdown, it's because so much of the material seems familiar," she wrote. "The exact details of this world are new, but the story beats and even specific characters feel like they were imported from 'The Lion King,' 'The Incredible Journey,' 'The Land Before Time,' 'The Jungle Book,' and other familiar features."
The Hollywood Reporter's Michael Rechtshaffen also agreed, saying that the movie "proceeds to tread an awfully familiar path, liberally borrowing thematic elements from 'The Lion King' and 'The Jungle Book,' among other Disney animated classics."
This kind of feedback, to those who have followed the movie's development, is not surprising. After all, "The Good Dinosaur" is a product of major changes spanning six years. According to io9, it had been "entirely reworked top to bottom," which probably explained the "cobbled together" feel.
To learn more about the development of this film, and what the original story was, read this.
About the film that made the final cut and got shown in theaters Wednesday, reviewers were pretty much in consensus with the fact that "The Good Dinosaur" had excellent visuals, which is not surprising considering it's Pixar we're talking about. However, even the deliciously beautiful images aren't enough to save the movie's lack of storytelling depth.
"The center of The Good Dinosaur's plot involves Arlo being swept far from home after an accident," Vox said. "He'll have to embark on a long journey back, a trip that will comprise the bulk of the film's running time."
"But (Peter) Sohn and company never give us any real sense of Arlo's trek," the review went on. "It's fine if we don't know how exactly how far he is from home, but it's a problem if we can't get any real sense of how far he's traveled."
Despite these hitches, Deadline opined that kids probably won't mind those things - and that's what really matters, so it appears.
The film has a cast that includes the voices of Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright, Steve Zahn, and Anna Paquin. Raymond Ochoa played Arlo and Jack bright voiced the child Spot.
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