Dinosaur
The only thing extinct here is storytelling.

I think we all know how this story ends....

Give a five-year-old $180 million dollars, a camera crew, and a team of digital animation experts and you might end up with something like Dinosaur, a breathtakingly beautiful, breathtakingly moronic film from Walt Disney Studios. Never has a film been so awe-inspiring in terms of sheer visual grandeur and so jaw-droppingly dumb in script and plot. (And yes, I know what you're thinking -- but I liked Phantom Menace!) Dinosaur possesses such a combination of amiable stupidity and exterior grace that you'll be wishing you were little again -- really little, like four or five. It is that simple, that predictable, and yet oddly entrancing all the same. Dinosaur is also the kind of movie that makes you wish studios would use this sort of animation for more sophisticated productions -- to create films equal to the technology they employ.

"Mmmm....I smell lunch!" "Quiet, you! This is a family movie."

Dinosaur tells the story of Aladar, a dinosaur who, as an unhatched egg, floats across rivers and oceans into a land where he is taken in by strangers to his kind. (You know, sort of like Moses.) He is raised by monkeys, but when the meteor hits, they've all got to make a run for the promised land. (Again, like Moses.) Aladar and his primate friends hook up with a large group of dinosaurs with the same idea, and together they make their way to their intended destination, fighting evil carnosaurs and learning valuable life lessons of sharing, friendship, and sacrifice along the way. They arrive, not surprisingly, in a lush and beautiful meadow, and frolic happily in the sun thereafter. Until, you know, they all become extinct. But that's another story.

"My agent swore I'd get Jurassic, not this Disney crap!" "I hear ya, man."

Now were this story -- which, to give a sample of dialogue, introduces the phrase "You're just a jerkasaurus!" into the public lexicon -- conveyed through anything less than the most amazing animation I've ever seen, it would border on intolerable. But Dinosaur is so vivid, so beautiful, and so rife with detail that it's worth seeing nonetheless. Not only is it incredibly realistic -- individual strands of hair and fur bend in the breeze; large, lumbering dinosaurs cast shadows on gorgeously unspoiled landscapes -- but it contains a sort of surreal, heightened beauty that is more appealing than reality or history. Of course, this juxtaposed with the inanity of the dialogue makes for a really strange filmgoing experience, but if you open your eyes and block out the sound, it's tremendous. Dinosaur is a film much like the creatures it depicts -- grand, majestic, and so, so stupid.

Dinosaur would have worked better had they not gone for a kid's movie -- or if, as Pixar did with the Toy Story series, they had attempted to make an intelligent, sweet film that pleases both children and adults. I would have loved to see Dinosaur as a purely historical, dialogue-free IMAX production. I also would love to see the graphic heights of Dinosaur put to different use -- this would be an ideal form for translating comics to the big screen, for example. One of the greatest misconceptions with animation is that it's purely children's terrain, as if the limits to imagination somehow end at age eighteen. Dinosaur, in its beautiful incoherence, only solidifies that concept. This is a wonderful film in many ways, but a bad, bad sign for the future of adult animation.

DROOL FACTOR: Um... no.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: No.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Oh, I guess so. To be honest, I don't even want to analyze this thing. Buy the video, turn down the sound, and feast your eyes.

-- Sarah Kendzior

Dinosaur is now playing.

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