Dino-right
POSTPONED a year for tinkering, Pixar Animation’s “The Good Dinosaur’’ is no instant classic like its sublime predecessor “Inside Out,’’ but it’s modestly pleasing in its own way.
Set millions of years ago in an alternate history where dinosaurs narrowly escaped extinction from a giant meteor hitting Earth, the story begins on a farm tended by a family of talking Apatosauruses.
Poppa Henry (Jeffrey Wright) tries to teach timid younger son Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) how to chase a “critter’’ who’s pilfering their corn supply, but the father gets washed away in a flash flood on a river bank.
Arlo pursues the creature he blames for his dad’s death, but ends up taking him as a pet he calls Spot, after Spot saves his life.
Spot — a preverbal prehistoric child who rapidly moves on all fours (Jack Bright provides his grunts) — teaches the awkward Arlo how to survive in the wilderness. The two bond when Spot draws a diagram showing that he’s an orphan.
As Arlo searches for his family, they encounter a series of other dinosaurs, most entertainingly a leathery, steer-herding and aphorism-spouting T. rex (Sam Elliott).
More tiresome is Thunderclap (Steve Zahn), the hippie-esque leader of a trio of hungry pterodactyls who says things like “the storm provides.’’
Arlo and Spot also munch on some hallucinogenic berries, a brief psychedelic sequence that doesn’t fit in a movie that will probably appeal most to the under-5 set — at least those who aren’t freaked at the idea of a character losing a parent.
The screenplay, credited to Meg LeFauve (“Inside Out”), is roughly a reversal of “How To Train Your Dragon,’’ with elements randomly borrowed from “The Lion King,’’ “The Incredible Journey’’ and other sources.
That said, this grab bag of animation tropes looks great, with brightly colored, stylized dinosaurs set against photorealistic backgrounds inspired by the Southwestern United States.
As directed by Peter Sohn, who’s worked on several Pixar projects as an artist and a voice actor, “The Good Dinosaur’’ threatens to go into schmaltz overdrive for what amounts to two back-to-back endings.
But its heart is in the right place, and it looks wonderful. You could do worse (like “The Peanuts Movie’’) for a Thanksgiving kids movie.