This week Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur will be released on DVD and Blu-ray (February 23), and if you see a more brilliantly animated film, well, ever, then it’s not animated. Honestly, the scenery in The Good Dinosaur is so realistic that it feels like you’re watching a documentary—at least until the characters appear on screen, and then you’re back in the familiar embrace of family fare, complete with the heartstrings and life lessons that we have come to expect from Disney and Pixar.
When we watched it last week with a house full of 10-year-olds The Good Dinosaur was a big hit. It was also a big hit when we attended the premiere, because, hello, it was the World Premiere, people.
I’ll be honest, sometime between the premiere and the early copy of The Good Dinosaur Blu-ray that we received, I have heard a few comments that the film didn’t live up to expectations. I don’t get it. The film is sweet and funny, the animation, as I mentioned, is beyond compare, and the takeaway is plentiful.
The movie is about family, inner-strength, overcoming adversity, friendship, potential, fear, and all the so ons and so forths—and the dinosaur isn’t the only good thing about it.
In fact, The Good Dinosaur actually proved itself a pivotal movie in our household. Don’t take my word for it. Take my word for it at Fandango:
“They asked me if I cried,” he said, holding my hand beneath the large oak tree just beyond the playground.
“Did you?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I cried a lot.”
It was the day after we had attended the premiere of Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur, and his tears were news to me. In the theater he had been sitting on the other side of his older brother, who at 12-years-old had clung to my arm in the soft, gray dark like the world was trying to pull us apart, and I suppose from his vantage point that it was. I had no idea that between the echoes of popcorn and laughter my 9-year-old was just a seat away dropping teardrops in his Fanta, something he apparently had shared with his classmates.
“What part made you cry?” I asked.
“Lots of parts, but especially . . .”
And then it kind of went from there with varying levels of emotion.
My point, don’t listen to the naysayers (ever, for that matter)—get your own copy of Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur on Blu-ray or DVD and decide for yourself. You owe your family that much.
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Family Life on Earth was sent an early copy of The Good Dinosaur for the purpose of this post. All opinions are ours (and possibly yours).
