It's the small details, like dino-skin, that Blu-ray really brings to life.
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In 2000, the most expensive movie and one of the most anticipated was Disney's "Dinosaur," which officially took $130 million to make, but was rumored to have cost much more. That's because this picture took 12 years to blend computer animation with photographs of real exotic location backgrounds—a process that required 1300 individual special effects and travels to six locations, including Hawaii and Tahiti. At the time, the president of Walt Disney Feature Animation said that like "Fantasia" and "Fantasia 2000," it wasn't so much a story they wanted to tell as it was a new animation concept that they wanted to try. And the animation is incredible.
But if you object to realistic CGI prehistoric images in the mold of BBC's "Walking with Dinosaurs" blended in the same frames with ever-so-slightly cartoonish main characters who talk, blame then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner. The original script was like "Fantasia" insomuch as it had no dialogue. Eisner made them make the animals talk. The result is a really different animated film that appeals to some children so much that they want to watch it again and again, while other children don't seem to care for it at all. And they're more in synch with the critics.
I personally think that reviewers have been too tough on this film. Seeing it now in glorious Blu-ray, with a full 1920x1080p resolution that's roughly six times the resolution of a standard DVD if you've got the best HD-TV monitor, you can really appreciate the sophisticated level of animation detail. Facial muscles on the creatures move realistically, and you can see grains of sand and particles of dust as a dinosaur herd migrates to their breeding grounds. The new Blu-ray technology supports up to 7.1 channels of surround sound and 32 streams of audio, so the sound spread across a 6-channel speaker system is also pretty dynamic.
But I don't think that critics were looking at the picture. They wanted a story, and what they got was a rehashed mish-mash of things we've seen before. A baby iguanadon is found by a family of lemurs (you can't blame Eisner for this anachronism) and raised by one of them. Though the patriarch of the clan thinks he's dangerous, eventually this outsider becomes the leader of the clan—just like Disney's "Tarzan," in fact. Then, when a meteor hits and destroys life in their little corner of the world, forcing them to hook up with a herd of migrating dinosaurs, it's hard not to think of the popular children's animated film, "The Land Before Time" and the gazillion sequels it inspired. Perhaps not coincidentally, one of the directors, Ralph Zondag, worked as the directing animator for "The Land Before Time" and also directed "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" (1983). He was teamed with Eric Leighton, who would go on to direct the animation for Peter Jackson's "King Kong." In other words, these guys are no slouches, and they turned in some pretty good work in "Dinosaur," despite having a script that wasn't all that earthshakingly original.
The hero, an iguanadon named Aladar (voiced by D.B. Sweeney), literally drops from the sky while still in his egg, and ends up being raised by a band of lemurs voiced by Ossie Davis, Max Casella, and Disney favorite Hayden Panettiere. Aladar is the perfect playmate for the little lemurs and everything is Paradise Found until the meteor crash quickly turns it into Paradise Lost. As they roam in search of a new home, they have to dodge aggressive raptors until they hook up with a herd led by the humorless iguanadon Kron (Samuel E. Wright). Kron's right-hand-dinosaur is the equally gruff Bruton (Peter Siragusa), and together they push the herd mercilessly, not caring if stragglers are left behind or if they risk the lives of the youngsters. If they had a brain larger than a walnut they'd be the philosophical followers of Darwin. Aladar, meanwhile, is more like Gandhi. Or Disney. So naturally he rubs them the wrong way, and poses a threat. The rest of the film focuses on the competition between Aladar and the two meanies, with Kron's sister, Neera (Julianna Margolies), getting caught in the middle.
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[release]19985[/release]