The Good Dinosaur

This review may contain spoilers!

While it's a good film, The Good Dinosaur is let down by quirky or sloppy choices scattered throughout the film. I would give The Good Dinosaur a 7.5/10.

The animation for this film has some beautiful detail when it comes to aspects of nature or background imagery, two of my favourite scenes of the film contain these beautifully animated fireflies. In terms of the film's plot I think what worked best was the relationship explored and developed between Arlo and Spot, you felt a lot of empathy towards both characters as they grew to care about one another. The score for this film is another immediate Disney/Pixar classic, I often feel animated films have some of the best scores in the film industry and this film just proves that.

Jeffrey Wright, who voiced Poppa, was the perfect voice for the father figure in this film; he was one of the voices that stood out the most at the start of the film. Peter Sohn, who voiced Forrest Woodbush, was quite a funny role; I loved the name and claim gag with his character. Steve Zahn, who voiced Thunderclap, was a fantastic antagonist; I thought his manic character was quite terrifying.

However the best performance came from Sam Elliott, who voiced Butch. While the cowboy and rustler sequence seemed a bit out of place Elliot made it one of the more memorable moments of the film. He's got a very unique and intimidating voice which worked perfectly for his T-Rex character. The best example of line delivery from Elliott was the story about the crocodiles and how important fear is.

The plot didn't really have a very exciting journey, in fact Arlo's journey home was forgettable more often than not and was constantly being interrupted by questionable scenes like getting high off berries or cowboy T-Rexs. As a result of the journey being treated as unimportant the film began to drag on and was a bit slower, the pacing could certainly have been a bit tighter. The start of this film was really poorly done, I didn't like that Wright's role died in almost exactly the same way that Mufasa did in Lion King. The animation of the background may have been highly artistic but frankly the characters were awfully animated; it was jarring seeing the incredible animation of the scenery while watching the weak animation of the characters moving through it.

Frances McDormand, who voiced Momma, really paled in comparison to Wright; she has no real screen presence or purpose in the film. Maleah Nipay-Padilla, who voiced Young Libby, embodied one of the characters that was most underused in the film; out of all of Arlo's family Libby is the one you care about least. Marcus Scribner, who voiced Buck, was a character that seemed like he had a rivalry with Arlo; however it was disappointing to see that they didn't explore this dynamic of the siblings much. Raymond Ochoa, who voiced Arlo, is one of the most annoying voice actors of the film which is a shame because he's the lead protagonist; this was a performance that just had no strength throughout the film and so you cared less about Arlo because of this. Mandy Freund and Steven Clay Hunter, who voiced Downpour and Coldfront respectively, felt like very insignificant voices when compared to Zahn's work; they were very much background roles. A.J. Buckley and Anna Paquin, who voiced Nash and Ramsey respectively, just felt like they were giving very artificial performances; I was really only interested by Elliott out of the group of T-Rexs. David Boat, Carrie Paff, Calum Grant and John Ratzenberger, who voiced Bubbha, Lurleane, Pervis and Earl respectively, brought a distinctly Western vibe to The Good Dinosaur which felt incredibly out of place; their performances were absolutely caricatures of Western streotypes and made the cowboy/rustler segment tiresome.