'3 Black Chicks Review...'
DINOSAUR (2000) Rated PG; running time 82 minutes Genre: Animation IMDB site: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0130623 Official site: http://disney.go.com/DisneyPictures/dinosaur/ Directed by: Eric Leighton, Ralph Zontag Cast: The voices of D.B. Sweeney, Ossie Davis, Julianna Margulies, Samuel E. Wright, Alfre Woodard, Max Casella, Hayden Panettiere, Joan Plowright, Della Reese, Peter Siragusa
Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000 Review URL: http://www.3blackchicks.com/bamsdinosaur.html
Way back when, I fell in love with a movie called THE BEAR, a film that explored the non-animated, non-comical lives of two bears fighting against man and nature. When it finally came out on DVD, I bought it, savoring the memory of having seen a rousing story told without the trickery of singing beasts and wisecracking sidekicks. I mention this because, for a short while, I had a glimmer of a hope that - given the beautifully epic sweep shown in its previews - DINOSAUR could also tell its tale without smarminess, or at least with the finesse of a TOY STORY.
And then, the monkeys spoke.
The Story (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**): After being mistakenly dropped, as an egg, into a group of lemurs--among them, father and group leader Yar (Ossie Davis), mother Pilo (Alfre Woodard), Zini (Max Casella), a hopeful (hopeless?) bachelor and Comic Relief, and daughter Suri (Hayden Panettiere)--Aladar the dinosaur (D.B. Sweeney) is brought up as a member of the lemur family. Aladar and the lemurs' world is changed forever when giant meteors fall onto their island, and they find themselves among other plant-eating dinosaurs, led by Darwin-loving Kron (Samuel E. Wright), his heart-of-gold sister Neera (Julianna Margulies), tough guy Bruton (Peter Siragusa), Baylene the slow-moving Brachiosaur (Joan Plowright), and Eema (Della Reese), a Weary Ol' Styrachosaur--all searching for the "nesting grounds", while trying to stay two steps ahead of the dreaded meat-eating Carnotaurs.
The Upshot: Actually, I'm probably being unfair to DINOSAUR in comparing it to the cinematic wonders of a "Bear" or the Fun Enough For An Adult (But It's Made For A Kiddie) fare found in a "Toy Story"; then again, with the oodles and oodles of dough Disney dumped into this project, you'd think they'd remember the number one rule: make the story interesting.
Instead, they blew their wad on making the pretty pictures, and scripting some awfully pedestrian lines which were proffered up by good actors like D.B. Sweeney, Ossie Davis, Joan Plowright, and Alfre Woodard--all actors whose talents belie what sounded like mere journeymanism on their parts. I was never convinced that these were anything but actors reading scripted lines (don't laugh; Toy Story had me every step of the way); instead of seeing big dinos and silly little monkeys, I found myself listening for familiar voices ("yep, that's Julianna Margulies reading 'Neera', sounding a whole lot like 'Carol Hathaway'...and hmmm, I wonder what James Earl Jones would've sounded like as 'Kron'...").
The filmmakers seemed to count on childrens' love of dinosaurs (and, uh, hasn't that fad played out by now? Last I checked, Pikachu was the in-thing with the young'uns) and All Things Disney, to carry the day by coming to see this movie in droves. That they'll get the kids in, I have no doubt. Will the movie keep their hyperactive attention? Well, that's another story. Will it reel in the adults? Well, it's a certainty that it didn't keep my attention.
Why? That one's easy: it lacked the spirit of fun, going instead for the preachiness of pounding a number of morals into the audience's head, to the point where I went begging for aspirin for the headache I developed. It certainly didn't help that for some bizarre reason, a narrator was tacked on to the beginning and ending, a'swingin' away with the Whifflebat Of Exposition. I reckon it's not A Good Thing when you start rooting for the bad meat-eating dinosaurs to corner the cute little plant-eaters and thrash them about the head until they just shut up, ya think? And if I see and hear another wisecracking movie monkey, I think I might do Damage.
[And at risk of being roasted by parents of young kidlets everywhere - "This is a children's film, you insensitive cad!" - let me just say that Black folk ain't the *only* ones who talk at the movies. Maybe It's Just Me; maybe it's asking too much to expect parents to tell their children that, no Billy, it's not polite to scream at the top of your lungs every time you get bored and want more JuJu Beans. Yeah. It's probably Just Me.]
DINOSAUR certainly had its Moments. On the technical front, it was drawn beautifully, and the creatures' movements seemed to be handled realistically (as much as one could expect); the lemurs, for instance, were made to move in a somewhat-sideways gait, not the straight-ahead walk of, say, apes. [And, speaking of lemurs, correct me if I'm wrong-- but since when would there be dinosaurs occupying the same era as lemurs? I mean, *talking* lemurs are bad enough; d'ya really expect me to swallow the lemurs talking before their proper time? I think not!] Story-wise, I chuckled a few times at Della Reese's Weary Ol' Black Chick lines. And if you've seen the long trailer--the one without the talking lemurs--you've pretty much seen the most exciting part of the flick. But a few Moments here or there do not an interesting story make, especially in a movie that's supposedly a Big Summer Event. The animation-lover in me was dazzled by the drawings, but like a badly-dubbed karate flick, the pictures and the sound didn't quite match up.
I don't doubt for a second that this movie will make a gazillion dollars this year and beyond, judging from the number of rather loud (but, noticeably, not laughing) kids in my audience. Still, box office considerations aside, DINOSAUR is a big and pretty airhead of a movie.
Bammer's Bottom Line: DINOSAUR may have been great eye candy to look at--and until the monkeys first spoke, it was indeed beautiful, without distraction--but they forgot to build something into this movie: heart. Fun- and story-wise, the toys in Toy Story and the ants in A Bug's Life ran circles around the big dino brutes. One thing in its favor, though: at least there were no singing prehistoric critters.
DINOSAUR (rating: flashing yellowlight): This one's sense of wonder went extinct about 10 minutes in.
Rose "Bams" Cooper /~\ Webchick and Co-Editor, /','\ 3BlackChicks Review /','`'\ Movie Reviews With Flava! /',',','/`, Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000 `~-._'c / EMAIL: bams@3blackchicks.com `\ ( http://www.3blackchicks.com/ /====\
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