Dinosaur film review

certificate_PG

DINOSAUR

Disney has never let such trifling concerns as historical and scientific fact or popular fiction get in the way of spinning a good yarn. With its latest full-length animation, the studio has the opportunity to lay to rest a question which has perplexed paleontologists for decades: how the dinosaurs became extinct.

While Dinosaur may not provide any concrete answers, the film does kick sand in the face of the theory that a giant meteor killed off the great animals.

Set 65 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, the picture follows the adventures of a plucky Iguanadon called Aladar (voiced by DB Sweeney), who is separated from his kin as a hatchling, and raised by a family of lemurs on an idyllic remote island.

When a meteor shower plunges the Earth into darkness, Aladar and his lemur clan are forced to flee their island home and seek sanctuary on the mainland with a group of migrating dinosaurs searching for a new nesting ground, led by stone-hearted Iguanadon Kron (Samuel E Wright).

Together with his loyal lieutenant Bruton (Peter Siragusa), Kron drives the migrating dinosaurs ever onwards, threatening to abandon the larger and weaker dinosaurs if they fail to keep up. Inevitably, Kron and Aladar soon come to blows over the way the herd is being managed, but the power struggle is tempered by Aladar's burgeoning affections for Kron's sister Neera (Julianna Margulies).

Like Aladar, Neera believes that the only way for the herd to survive is to work together, moving as a unit and supporting the weakest dinosaurs in the field. Together, the two young Iguanadons bravely challenge the traditional ways of Kron's regime and lead the group in search of a new nesting ground.

From a technical viewpoint, Dinosaur is a marvel, seamlessly blending live-action photography, computer-animated characters and special effects wizardry. The unprecedented scope of the film-makers' vision is astonishing, such as the awesome opening sequence where the camera follows an Iguanadon egg (later to hatch into Aladar) as it passes from one dinosaur to the next, the camera swooping through herds of grazing animals numbering in the thousands.

Jaws drop within the first few minutes and stay there for the duration of the film as more than 30 different species of prehistoric creatures pass through this story of survival and adaptability, from the 3ft long Microceratops to the 120ft long Brachiosaur.