The Good Dinosaur is a movie that I kind of want to love. I love dinosaurs, I love Pixar, and it’s so, so pretty to look at. The newest trailer for it finally gives us some real story details and an idea of the plot, but it all feels a bit, well, done before.
It’s hard to judge a movie entirely from trailers, but between the simplistic-seeming storytelling and the clearly-for-the-preschool-crowd character design, I’m just not getting excited about this one. It seems a little like the movie we would get if The Flintstones had a baby with The Land Before Time and then that baby had a baby with a sad indie rock ballad, but packaged for four-year-olds to watch. Sadly, it strikes me as a film that because of its cuteness and its Pixar origin will do well financially, but just the promotion for this movie puts me in mind of more moderately successful, uncontroversially mediocre films like 2013’s Epic.
I have a feeling I’ll be waiting to watch this one on Netflix or from Redbox or if I’m ever, for some kind of Twilight Zone reason, babysitting a toddler.