The Good Dinosaur (2015)

*** out of ****

Before even talking about the content of this film, let me just say one thing - “The Good Dinosaur” has the greatest animation I have ever seen, bar none. The digital images are so authentic in many places you'd swear you are looking at actual footage instead of animation. Rivers sparkle over millions of tiny waves.  Trees sway in the breeze with each leaf doing it's own thing.  Dirt, stones, mountains.....everything is completely authentic  Really unbelievable.

The trailers for “The Good Dinosaur” made a big deal out of the idea that the giant meteor that hit Earth 65 million years ago instead missed, but happily in the film it takes only about 5 seconds to cover it.  This was simply a plot device to allow for dinosaurs to continue evolving until we get to the timeline of the movie. And as the film begins, it's clear dinosaurs that have really gotten along – we see a family of Apotosaurs that are corn farmers. There is the mother, father and three kids, and the runt among them is Arlo. Arlo is desperate to be seen as a valuable member of the team, but he lacks the size and courage of his father and brother.  This leads him to do more and more risky things to try to prove himself.

So when he falls in the river and is swept miles and miles from home, the trek back becomes his test of manhood. Tagging along with him is a feral prehistoric human boy, one that can't talk and acts in a very animalistic way but can think and reason as well as Arlo can. Their trip home is the central plot of the movie, and their relationship is fun and eventually emotional.  They run across other dinosaurs that want to help them, ones that want to hunt them, and generally leave their way fraught with danger.  Kind of like a dino "Incredible Journey".

I have to admit I was happily surprised by this film. After its original run of excellence, Pixar has been hit and miss for a while and this looked like another potential miss. That had more to do with the trailers leading me to think it was about something other than what it was actually about. It turns out that this is a very heartfelt and fun ride, and easily one of Pixar's better efforts in a while.

The best praise I can give this is that I watched it with an 11 year old boy who was so caught up in the story that he cried with a smile on his face during the emotional ending. So what else is there to say? It clearly accomplishes what it sets out to.