The Good Dinosaur has come home. The Pixar-Disney movie about a boy and a dog, where the boy is an Apatosaurus named Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) and the boy is a humanoid named Spot, charmed audiences late in 2015 and now has landed on DVD and Blu-Ray.
The Pete Sohn directed film finds a world where that asteroid that made the dinosaur extinct, well… it missed the earth. Fast forward a few million years and dinosaurs roam the earth with humans just starting to come into their own. Arlo and his Apatosaurus family are farmers, tilling the land and growing corn. Other dinosaurs have evolved into different positions, like T. Rex’s are cattle herders!
Arlo is a little different than his brothers and sisters. They each have roles on the farm and Arlo, despite years of trying, cannot seem to find his role in the family business.
Tragedy strikes and then is compounded by Arlo being swept away from his family. He is lost, alone and completely out of his element. Then, he meets Spot and the two bond as they travel across the American west in hopes of Arlo finding his way home.
The Good Dinosaur has plenty of themes and messages that parents will welcome and many, many moments for children to cherish. We predict that it will become a repeat viewing Blu-Ray and DVD in many a household.
Ochoa is joined in the voice cast by Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Steve Zahn, A.J. Buckley, Anna Paquin and Sam Elliott… as the T-Rex patriarch Butch!
And like so many of the past releases from Pixar-Disney (like the recent Inside Out), it is the bonus features that set it apart from all other home videos.
Given our Sohn interview and his reveal that in order to get fully prepared for The Good Dinosaur, he and his team headed to a working cattle ranch and visited with the McKay family, the bonus feature that immediately caught our eye is Following the T-Rex Trail. The video diary of Sohn and his team’s journey allows us to fully see how all the artists at Pixar were inspired to create not only the emotion of the film (which they always do so well), but the aesthetic of the western united states with such impeccable beauty. Having covered many a Pixar film and knowing how their journeys (like heading to Scotland for Brave) have influenced the final film, we cannot recommend enough taking in Following the T-Rex Trail after enjoying the entire The Good Dinosaur film.
A surprisingly emotional bonus feature is The Filmmakers’ Journey. As anyone who has followed The Good Dinosaur’s journey to the big screen knows, this has been a six year journey full of ups and downs. This featurette finds the creative minds behind the film talking first-hand about the struggle to bring this Dinosaur to life and the joy in finally having the film find the light of day and be released to the masses.
There is no question that kids (and a slew of adults) are fascinated with dinosaurs. That is probably what drew million to the film in the first place. Those folks will not want to miss True Lies About Dinosaurs. First and foremost, everyone knows that Apatosaurus did not speak English. Well, duh! That’s not the only stretch of the dino-truth in The Good Dinosaur. We were delighted to discover a slew of other fun facts that found animators playing with the reality of what dinosaurs were all about back when they roamed the earth. We can even see a family game emerging from this one… Dino Fact or Fiction!
As someone who has been to the Pixar campus many times, we can proudly report that it is a place that is ripe with artistic power. The people who work their magic here are among the best in the business. They are also among the most collaborative creators we’ve ever seen in any business. That’s why witnessing Recyclosaurus is such a hoot! This bonus feature finds The Good Dinosaur crew competing to discover which of the fabled film studio’s department can create the most divine dinosaur ever, using only discarded items from the animation house’s “free table.” Recyclosaurus is rowdy good fun!
Given the framework of the story as we established earlier, the traditional boy and his dog animated tale brought some unique challenges to the artists in residence at Pixar. Every Part of the Dinosaur shines a light on those speedbumps and how the team overcame them. How does one get around the fact that the dinosaur is the boy and the boy is kind of a dog? Every Part of the Dinosaur answers that so brilliantly that the next time your kids have you pop in the film, your view of the entire thing will be slightly different.
Lastly, the Oscar nominated animated short film Sanjay’s Super Team makes The Good Dinosaur home video package complete. The flick debuted before the latest Pixar gem in theaters and having another stroke of Pixar perfection on this collection is simply put – pure movie magic.
Film: B
Bonus Features: A