The Los Angeles Times reports that though Disney-Pixar's "The Good Dinosaur raises high hopes and expectations for both adults and five-year-olds, it does not disappoint neither.
Great expectations from the audience are within reason: the animation film has been in development since 2009 - a good six years in the making. The feature was directed by Peter Sohn (who was also involved in Ratatouille, Toy Story 3 and Monsters University) and written by Meg LeFauve who was supported by three other writers: Erik Benson, Kelsey Mann and Bob Peterson.
The impressive roster of talents isn't all that the film has going for it. It also entices the audience with an irresistible "what-if" premise: What if an asteroid never hit Earth and never caused a series of changes that led to the irrevocable extinction of all the dinosaurs that walked on the face of the Earth? And what if these creatures lived life as they would in the Wild West? And what if the protagonist's loyal beast in this case is not a canine man's best friend nor a wild stallion but an undomesticated human child?
All these premises set up a very interesting story that leads to the development of an intriguing and highly entertaining turn of events.
The feature's visuals are also cutting edge and go over and beyond what Pixar has done in the past. Mashable calls the effects from "The Good Dinosaur," as "visually groundbreaking" with animation that seems "too luminously real." The combined effort is judged as "an optic leap" for the animation studio.
The characters in focus are a young dinosaur and his boy who acts more like a faithful dog than a human child.
This young dinosaur is an Apatosaurus named Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), and the child of Poppa (Jeffrey Wright) and Momma (Frances McDormand). His family of farmers are are faced with a problem: they fear that an insufficient harvest will not let them survive the coming winter under the Clawtooth Mountains.
Unfortunately, timid Arlo has a character problem, and his dad attempts to toughen him up so that he can be big enough to survive the big, wild world. Poppa gives him an assignment - that of catching the creature that has been making intrepid trips into their silo and eating up all the crops. The creature turns out to be a beastly human child. The two create a bond when they a tragedy forces them to go an adventure that helps Arlo overcome all his fears.
