Recently, I watched The Good Dinosaur and here is what I thought about it. Contains spoilers for The Good Dinosaur.

The Good Dinosaur opens with telling you about how the meteor didn’t hit the Earth so the dinosaurs didn’t go extinct. It transitions to beautiful landscape with calming music. The world just looks so vibrant and so realistic. Maybe this would have been how the world looked like without humans destroying it.

We see that the dinosaurs have evolved to be civilised and Arlo’s family, because they are herbivores, plant crops to survive the winter. Now because of dinosaurs not having hands, we get to see one of the most creative ways of planting crops.

The problem is though, they are willing to spend more time showcasing crops than actually focusing on developing The Good Dinosaur’s individual characters.

Then we get introduced to Arlo and his siblings. His siblings each have their own personality and they were exhibited right immediately when they were born? The siblings were also never mentioned after the first half and said nothing during the ending. Then we see Arlo, a dinosaur significantly weaker than his siblings. Arlo is also scared of everything.

The movie will then continue around Arlo scared but kind nature. This can be seen when Arlo freed Spot and decided not to kill him, or when he free the small chicken despite scared of being there. Throughout the movie, we see Arlo timid side but also see his determination and his kindness, which was hidden away because of his fear. This whole movie revolves around him overcoming his fear and we get to see that when he bravely ran through a flock of birds when earlier he was scared of a chicken.

The family has this “thing” where if you did something bigger than yourself, you get to mark their corn silo. The rest of the family who helped harvest the crops all got a chance to mark the corn silo. All except Arlo, this pushes Arlo’s Dad to try and get Arlo to do a simple job, killing the critter that has been eating their corn. This led to Arlo meeting Spot, his human dog.

Later on, Arlo’s father died, which really was suppose to be an emotional scene. But they didn’t spend that much time building up his dad’s character so we can’t really care for him. There are scenes showing Arlo and his dad bonding with each other but they weren’t very impactful, if anything his dad should have died maybe at the end? Like if Arlo just returned and the 3 Pteranodon were chasing him? And doesn’t this scene weirdly feels like Lion King when Mufasa dies?

This movie looks beautiful but the story is just very weird. The idea is great but the execution of it wasn’t the best. They definitely should have used more time in showing how unique a world would be if dinosaur didn’t extinct. They could have more characters or at least fill up the environment with dinosaurs. Most of the time the environments just looks so lonely.

Some side characters were very lovable like the three cowboy T-rex with a Texas accent. They were very fun to be with and show you a loving family but halfway through the movie Arlo leave them. We didn’t get enough of them, we need more time allocated for this three T-Rex. This movie sort of plays out like a road trip, you meet people while continuing your journey.

The story also has the weirdest parts. Like when Spot and Arlo ate a berry that drugged them and give them a trophy experience. This is suppose to show Spot and Arlo bonding with each other but this is just weird.

The Good Dinosaur did a really good job showing this scene where Arlo talked about his family and it’s revealed that Spot also has a family, just that his parents died. They also recreated the scene of Arlo’s dad with Arlo blowing on the firefly.

Overall this movie look gorgeous but the story is just lacking of character development. Lack of development results in the viewers no caring about the side characters. There is some humorous parts for children but most of it is quite sad and dark which is surprising for a kids movie.

The idea of this movie is good, the environment is perfect but the characters are just lacking. The pacing also feels very rushed from Arlo’s dad dying to Arlo getting lost, story is just very common and can be seen in numerous movies.

Ratings: 6/10

Did anyone feel this scene was pretty messed up?