In Disney’s ‘Dinosaur,’ Style Overcomes Substance

At first glance, there would seem to be little in common between Gladiator, recently the country’s most popular film in its first two weeks of release, and Dinosaur, the Disney film that recently supplanted it at the top. Yet both films resound with similar themes of cooperation among diverse peoples (or creatures), heroism and selflessness. For Dinosaur, an astounding technical achievement that combines elements of computer-generated imagery, live-action film, and traditional animation to form a cohesive, visually stunning whole, such positive messages alongside its surface pop may not be enough to rescue it from critical griping that it falls far short of all it could have been.

Dinosaur opens impressively with a sweeping sequence: a dinosaur egg is violently dislodged from its nest by a rampaging carnotaur and subsequently carried about, around, in and out over the film’s prehistoric landscape, culminating with a thrilling, swooping, bird’s-eye (make that pteranodon’s-eye…) view of the vistas of the dinosaur-inhabited world). Yet, despite crackling cinematic virtuosity and freshness, the opening ends on a stale note when the iguanadon egg lands squarely in the midst of a pack of furry, cuddly lemurs who fear the scaly-skinned outsider, but eventually decide to do the right thing and embrace him as their own. Though this is a laudable theme, didn’t we just see this last summer from Disney? Familiarity, however, does not breed contempt in the case of Dinosaur, though it may unfortunately dull your overall enthusiasm for the film.

The tiny new member of the lemur family grows up to be a towering inguanodon named Aladar (voiced by D.B. Sweeney). All is well with his family, including mom (Alfre Woodard), dad (Ossie Davis), and wise-cracking brother Zini (Max Casella), but their idyllic existence is shaken to the core when a meteor shower buffets the earth and the fiery impact forces the family from their home and onto a trek to find safe ground and friendly, welcoming confines.

Dinosaur mixes in issues of courage, community, charity and sharing when Aladar and crew meet up with a pack of varied dinosaur species who are making their way across hostile, dry terrain in order to reach the idyllic nesting grounds, a land of plenty which they hope has remained untouched by recent, cataclysmic events. At the head of this pack is the driving, relentless Kron (Samuel E. Wright), whose fierce, unforgiving ways threaten the lives of the elder members of his pack, particularly the styrachosaur Eema (Della Reese) and brachiosaur Baylene (Joan Plowright), with whom Aladar and friends have grown close. The noble Aladar encourages them onward, despite endless, arid terrain, and unforgiving, desolate canyons (in which lurk hungry velociraptors and carnosaurs). He clashes with the obstinate Kron, and their prickly association isn’t helped when he draws the attentions of Kron’s sister, Neera (Julianna Margulies).

Moving along at a lean 84 minutes, Dinosaur rated PG for intense images and mild violence, is a marvel to behold as once-distant world of history come to life on the screen. It is a feat of animation that triumphs in every technical sense imaginable, from the melding of long-gone species with the very tangible, real landscapes around them, to the increasingly expressive features of the “actors.” Directors Ralph Zonuag and Eric Leighton also get good work from their voice-over cast, especially the welcome presence of such veterans as Davis, Reese and Plowright, all of whom are invaluable to the film and lend it some emotional weight beyond all the effects wizardry. True, the film could have used a punchier script, and perhaps less adherence to the tried-and-true Disney story structure, but Dinosaur is definitely a case where style overcomes a lack in substance and makes viewing worthwhile and rewarding.