WE'RE BACK! A DINOSAUR'S STORY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1993 Scott Renshaw
Voices: John Goodman, Joey Shea, Yeardley Smith, Kenneth Mars, Walter Cronkite. Screenplay: John Patrick Shanley. Directors: Dick Zondag & Ralph Zondag.
For the first time in several years, Disney does not have a new animated release for the holidays, as The House the Mouse Built instead readies THE LION KING for summer 1994. Into that void steps WE'RE BACK! A DINOSAUR'S STORY, hoping to rake up some of the family entertainment dollars now available for the taking. If I didn't know how long animation takes to produce, I'd swear Universal had thrown it together in a few months just for that purpose. WE'RE BACK is sadly uninspired kiddie fare, perhaps moderately diverting for elementary schoolers but likely to be a tedious 70 minutes for their parents.
WE'RE BACK is the story of four dinosaurs subjected to a unique experiment by time-traveling scientist Captain NewEyes (voice of Walter Cronkite). Rex the Tyrannosaurus rex (John Goodman), Elsa the pterodactyl (Felicity Kendal), Woog the triceratops (Rene Levant) and Dweeb the apatosaurus (Charles Fleischer) are all given an intelligence-enhancing grain and invited to the future to fulfill the wishes of children who want to see a real dinosaur. They agree, and find themselves in modern day New York where they meet two lonely kids: cocky Louie (Joey Shea) and poor-little-rich-girl Cecilia (Yeardley Smith). They also meet Captain NewEyes' evil brother Professor ScrewEyes (Kenneth Mars), whose scary circus threatens both children and dinosaurs.
From a story standpoint, WE'RE BACK is a mess. It seems to have no idea what it wants to be--fast paced adventure, goofy comedy, dark mood piece--so it throws a little bit of everything into the stew in the hope that something will work. But the chase sequences are only interesting thanks to gut-churning computer effects, the comedy is limp and the scarier segments, which are the best, come far too late. There is even an attempt at a musical production number, a lively enough James Horner-Thomas Dolby composition called "Roll Back the Rock," but it strains so hard to be charming that it's an effort to watch. The schizophrenic tone is not necessarily a problem for a 7-year-old attention span, but the lack of continuity gave me a headache.
Visually, the film fares only slightly better. The prehistoric setting is appropriately gloomy, but we only see it for about a minute. Most of the film takes place in a New York colored in oranges and golds, and it's just not at all interesting to look at. Professor ScrewEyes' circus is dark and creepy, but it is a real missed opportunity. Directors Dick and Ralph Zondag could have gone for a real PINOCCHIO-style funhouse of frights, but they just let the circus sit there full of unexplored potential. They manage to pull out one truly arresting image, involving a flock of crows, but the film is almost over by that time. Nothing in WE'RE BACK captures the eye or the imagination.
Perhaps the fatal flaw in WE'RE BACK is a collection of characters which might almost scrape together a personality between them. Disney built its empire on carefully created and memorably performed characters, but screenwriter John Patrick Shanley turns in as bland a bunch as I can imagine. John Goodman does a half-hearted Bing Crosby impression as the affable Rex, Charles Fleischer simply recycles Roger Rabbit as Dweeb, and Felicity Kendal and Rene Levant are each thrown a token character trait as the other dinosaurs. Walter Cronkite and Julia Child seem to be present only for the novelty of doing trademark lines to animation, and Jay Leno is genuinely annoying as Captain NewEyes' alien sidekick. The kids are not bad, nicely performed by Joey Shea and "The Simpsons'" Yeardley Smith, but the only real fun comes from Martin Short as a frustrated clown in the scary circus. His antics are as random as everything else, but at least they were funny.
As if the slipshod Disney knockoffs (the contract signing from THE LITTLE MERMAID, zoom-ins on the wide-eyed heroine) weren't bad enough, WE'RE BACK gives in to insipid moralizing. Uncle Walt had more respect for kids than that. It's too bad when parents' only matinee options are as monotonous as WE'RE BACK. Better to rent FREE WILLY again.
Or wait for THE LION KING ... seven months and counting.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 dino-snores: 3.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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