Dinosaur
Rated
PG
Opens
Friday, May 19
D.B. Sweeney,
Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis and Della Reese are among the
actors whose voices are used in Dinosaur.
More than $200
million was spent to produce Dinosaur, which took
six years to make and employed 900 people.
Dinosaur's
original script was written by Walon Green, who co-wrote
The Wild Bunch
Director Paul
Verhoeven (Starship Troopers) wanted to direct Dinosaur
as a live-action film in the '80s.
With its computer-generated, 3-D images, Disney's Dinosaur
is an amazing film to look at, a technological wonder that
merges groundbreaking animation with live-action backgrounds.
The end result, however, is a lot like watching a stripper
with augmented breasts. Like the prehistoric creatures in
Dinosaur, fake boobies can be really fun to look
at as they make their way back and forth across the stage
defying the laws of gravity. But then the novelty wears
off, and you begin to wonder if there's anything more here
than some cool special effects.
Dinosaur's big problem comes with the story--or
perhaps more accurately, the lack thereof. With shades of
Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, the paper-thin
plot follows the adventures of Aladar, an iguanodon separated
from his dino-family and raised by a clan of lemurs--cute
little monkeys that are sure to be the staple of Disney's
latest merchandising blitz. A deadly meteor shower sends
Aladar and his adopted simian family on the run for survival,
where they join up with a herd of dinosaurs in search of
a safer home. Under the leadership of Kron, a narrow-minded
bully, the herd is driven to the point of exhaustion. Kron
has no regard for the older, weaker dinosaurs, whom he sees
as unnecessary burdens. Of course this leads to confrontations
between him and Aladar, who values all life.
Following Disney's most basic story structures, Dinosaur
keeps things simple for younger audiences. All of the Disney
moral values are touched upon--heroism, sacrifice, acceptance
of cultural diversity and the value of life. The problem
is that the film itself is not suited to the younger audience
the story caters to--unless you want your kids seeing dinosaurs
maul each other. Older kids, teenagers and adults will enjoy
the animation, but are likely to be put off by the surprisingly
juvenile story. Unlike Antz and Toy Story,
Dinosaur fails to appeal to both younger and older
audiences, and never completely captures either.
The key to success in all animation is giving nonhuman
characters human characteristics and personalities, which
Dinosaur feebly tries to do, with equally feeble
results. The main problem--besides the weak script--is that
the dinosaurs look too real. These aren't the cuddly if
cold-blooded reptiles from Land Before Time; these
are more like those scary creatures from Jurassic Park.
And while they look cool--damn cool--there is no way you
can buy them as anything other than dinosaurs. Disney would
have been better-served throwing its efforts into an IMAX-type
film, which is what the first 15 minutes of Dinosaur
feels like anyway. Instead, the filmmakers try to give the
dinosaurs humanlike traits, which seems ludicrous, especially
the romance angle--they're big lizards for crying out loud!
Sure, Godzilla had a son, but you never had to watch the
courting process.
Disney has spent a lot of time, energy and money putting
together an impressive-looking film. But there is so little
to offer beyond visual stimulation that Dinosaur
amounts to no more than an expensive lap-dance.
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 10,
2000
|
