Ebert Did It Better: Gasbag Reviews

The Good Dinosaur – 2015

Director Peter Sohn
Starring Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin, A.J. Buckley, Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Steve Zahn
Screenplay Peter Sohn, Erick Benson, Meg LeFauve, Kelsey Mann, Bob Peterson

Why didn’t my kids want to watch this?
Five writers means 5x the creativity, right?
So, the big asteroid missed?
Millions of years later…does that mean present day is here, or still years off?
So in the millions of years, the brontosauruses changed from real dinosaurs to these square headed things?
Who taught the dinosaurs to plant?
How do they make the thing that handles seeds?
Wouldn’t one dinosaur require about as much food as their field in about a day?
How come the smallest dinosaur is in the biggest egg? I mean, other than poorly written irony.
Arlo? So the parents like the album Alice’s Restaurant?
What do dinosaurs do with chickens? How would they crack an egg?
How do they build the small fence with twine and sticks?
Since when has anything become 100% critter proof in the first act?
What does walking in the night with lightning bugs do to conquer one’s fear?
Why don’t dinosaurs migrate to find food in the winter instead of storing a few days’ worth of food?
Are we supposed to feel irony for humans being referred to as critters?
If Arlo can’t kill a trapped critter, does that mean that I shouldn’t kill rats?
“You’re me and more.” Is that the kind of thing every parent should feel provided their kid doesn’t spend 4 days a week smoking pot?
How come the dad didn’t notice that Arlo couldn’t walk any further up the river, but has no problem walking back?
How hard is it for a full grown brontosaurus to drown in a flash flooded river?
Why is it that Disney dad’s always die after saying something cryptic to their underwhelming progeny?
What happened to Arlo’s siblings and why is his Mom doing all of the harvesting?
Since when do we blame something we chose not to kill for a bad twist of fate after that choice?
So Arlo doesn’t drown when the water is deeper for him than it was for the dad?
How come if his dad said you don’t get lost as long as you follow the river the first thing Arlo does is walk away from the river?
Who has ever had the instinct to eat something that they just stepped in?
How many of these individuals survived?
Has there ever been a weaker dinosaur than Arlo?
How does trapped prey survive the night when he can hear predators like raptors in the woods?
How can animators make lizards, trees, caterpillars and varmints look real, but make the dinosaurs look so fake?
If something is in a critter’s mouth, wouldn’t most species that can build ineffective huts understand it was food?
Why would a Styracosaurus, with all of those horns and such a tough hide be more of a wimp than Arlo?
Is it legal for underage dinos and critters to get drunk?
So the universal signal for family is stick figures inside of a circle in the sand? I thought it was stick figures on the back of your car?
Since the boy howls and his parents died, does this make him Tarzan?
So the lesson Arlo learned about being in a rainstorm is to run around helpless and pass out?
Shouldn’t they be teaching me a lesson about saving the earth by now?
So Pterodactyls are still carnivores, but Tyrannosaurs are nice?
What is the purpose to herding longhorns? Wouldn’t life be easier if they just hung in the periphery like other predators and picked them off occasionally? You know, like the raptors?
How come the raptors look like the Beatles vultures from Jungle Book?
How does Arlo go from being afraid of chickens to rough necking buffalo?
Why are the Pterodactyls be presented so coolly, like sharks the second time we’ve seen them rather than the first?
Why do I expect “S-E-X” to be presented into the sky when we see Arlo’s dad again?
Why does it take so long for the flying beasts to eat Spot when we saw how quick they were the first time?
How can something without feathers get waterlogged?
Do flash floods only happen when the plot needs them?
How come Spot’s Mom looks like Syndrome’s assistant? R.I.P. Elizabeth Peña
How can Pixar release a film that is so average in the same year they release one of their best films?
How many Pixar films have you decided that you don’t need to own?

I think I know now why my kids didn’t want to watch this.

(*** out of *****)