The Good Dinosaur (2015)

This is a solid family film, but as far as Pixar films go, this movie pales in comparison to Inside Out earlier this year.  The reason is that the movie lacks heart.  Pixar is known for drawing out emotions from its viewers but The Good Dinosaur was a little tame. The story is kind of typical for the genre and a little simple and shallow for Pixar's standards. It seems to hearken back to other classic animated films.  It is very much like Lion King, in which the father dinosaur dies tragically early on (very typical Disney).  Then there are three pterodactyls that try to make a meal of Arlo, like the hyenas from Lion King.

The premise of the film is interesting. What if the dinosaurs never went extinct? Then they would have evolved... to learn to domesticate agriculture and livestock, like humans did.  There is some charm and some genuine laughs. The movie is visually stunning, animating different species of dinosaurs in a friendly way that looks a lot better than The Land Before Time.  Those lightning bugs and the actual lightning and thunder that storm up trouble for the protagonist.  The animation is actually quite different. The computer images are not evocative of the same visuals we're used to from Pixar, but this was the kind of animation that this movie needed.