The Good Dinosaur

2015
PG
1h 33m

IMDb RATING

6.7/10

133K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

Play trailer2:25

Animal Adventure Buddy Comedy Computer Animation Dinosaur Adventure Quest Action Adventure Animation Comedy Drama

In a world where dinosaurs and humans live side-by-side, an Apatosaurus named Arlo makes an unlikely human friend.In a world where dinosaurs and humans live side-by-side, an Apatosaurus named Arlo makes an unlikely human friend.In a world where dinosaurs and humans live side-by-side, an Apatosaurus named Arlo makes an unlikely human friend.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.7/10

133K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

4,061

352

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 9 wins & 41 nominations total

Top cast27

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Jeffrey Wright

Poppa
(voice)

Frances McDormand

Momma
(voice)

Maleah Nipay-Padilla

Young Libby
(voice)
(as Maleah Padilla)

Ryan Teeple

Young Buck
(voice)

Jack McGraw

Young Arlo
(voice)

Marcus Scribner

Buck
(voice)

Raymond Ochoa

Arlo
(voice)

Jack Bright

Spot
(voice)

Peter Sohn

Pet Collector
(voice)

Steve Zahn

Thunderclap
(voice)

Mandy Freund

Downpour
(voice)

Steven Clay Hunter

Coldfront
(voice)

A.J. Buckley

Nash
(voice)
(as AJ Buckley)

Anna Paquin

Ramsey
(voice)

Sam Elliott

Butch
(voice)

David Boat

Bubbha
(voice)
(as Dave Boat)

Carrie Paff

Lurleane
(voice)

Calum Grant

Pervis
(voice)
(as Calum Mackenzie Grant)

User reviews553

Featured review

6/10

A Pixar stumble, but has its moments

If you can make it through the tedious first third, it's not a bad little movie. The interplay between Arlo and Spot is generally enjoyable (the first really good scene is Spot trying to feed Arlo). The movie can be quite funny, somewhat thrilling, and occasionally touching.

So basically, if this was some kids cartoon from some lesser studio, this would be pretty good. For Pixar though, it's a big disappointment.

One of the film's biggest flaws is also one of its greatest strengths; the animation. On the one hand, the landscapes - forests, rivers, fields - have an amazing photo-realism that mark them as an incredible achievement in animation. But this hyper-realism makes the main dinosaur breed look terrible; they are about as realistic as the cars in Cars, and it's like someone filmed a sock puppet show in the Grand Canyon. It's the thing most reviewers seem to talk about, so it's rather amazing that Pixar didn't see the problem themselves.

It's not that the dinosaurs needed to look real, but the insistence on those giant, soulful eyes made the heads misshapen, and the colors are too clean and shiny to meld with the environments. Other breeds of dinosaurs and insects have an acceptable cartooniness, but Arlo is just annoying in design, creating a constant de-immersion signal.

The story is conventional and predictable, the emotional moments feel manipulative, but still, it's not bad as kid's cartoons go. But it sure isn't what we expect from Pixar.

cherold
Aug 13, 2016
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Trivia
The Good Dinosaur (2015) experienced multiple production issues. The film was in production for six years and it suffered from creative differences, story problems, Pixar multitasking between film productions, and a quality slump the studio suffered from Cars 2 (2011) to Monsters University (2013). Director Bob Peterson was removed from the project in the summer of 2013, just under a year before the film's original release date in May 2014. Peterson moved on to another project, while John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Mark Andrews, and Peter Sohn stepped in temporarily to work on various sections of the film. In November 2013, due to further delays, Pixar laid off sixty-seven employees of its twelve hundred-person workforce, following the closure of its satellite studio in Canada a month before, when about eighty employees had been laid off, officially to refocus Pixar's efforts at its main headquarters. "For Pixar, it was a dramatic event", said Jim Morris, the studio's General Manager and Executive Vice President of Production. "It was tough on the company. Most studios would have said, 'The movie's fine. It's not bad.' And it wasn't bad; it just wasn't great. We wanted to have a great movie." On October 21, 2014, Peter Sohn was officially named the new director. The story was then re-worked, and some major changes included lowering the age of the protagonist and adding the concept of nature itself being the main antagonist. While John Lithgow still remained cast as Poppa in the film (he would later be replaced), he acknowledged the fantastic changes in the script and said that "(The film's) gonna be better than I ever imagined."

Goofs
In the film, the T-Rexes gallop although in real life they would have run more like birds. However, the T-Rexes are cast in the film as cowboys riding herd on their longhorns. The animators clearly used galloping to fit this trope. Humor is added by the straight posture of the T-Rexes and their short arms which mimics the role of riders holding reins while atop horses (and how many children act while playing 'cowboy').

Quotes
Poppa: Sometimes you got to get through your fear to see the beauty on the other side.

Crazy credits
This sentence appears towards the end and is then encircled in a ring, like the human family towards the end of the movie: "We are grateful to the family and friends of The Good Dinosaur crew your love and support made this film possible."