I think Disney's Dinosaur is underrated. It was a big deal when it came out - there were a lot of commercials, toys, merchandice, every kid (at least in my childhood) was obsessed with it - so it's kinda weird seeing how little fans the movie still has. It's a solid good movie but for some reason it didn't gather much of a following. Maybe it was the Avatar of its age? A big box office hit that everyone seemed to love when it came out but suddenly fell into obscurity once the next big movie hit the screens. Who knows...
I think the CGI and music still hold up very strong. For a movie that is two decades old, it looks incredible. It was a very wise move of them to use real locations. I mean, you can't make reality look more realistic now can you?
It has a lot of memorable scenes, but my favorite is the Meteor hitting Earth. It's such a beautiful yet terrifying scene, and I love it how it's one of those "the audience knows but the characters don't" scenes that just keeps you at the edge of your seat. I've seen the movie hundreds of times and still, without fail, I always gasp when the meteor falls down from the sky. For us it's obvious that the giant flaming rock from outer space is dangerous and we want the main characters to run and find a safe place to hide, but to them it's a fascinating new thing and they don't know how to react until their lifes depend on it. Such good cinema. Mwah 💋👌
I've seen the movie in English once so I can only talk about the dialogue and voice acting in Finnish, and it's... Ehh, I've heard better. All the elderly dinosaurs (including Kron and Bruton) and the lemurs sound good but the main character and his love interest? You can hear that there was an attempt, but their scenes just seem so artificial and plastic-y, if that makes sense.
Also, I can't stand Zini. When I was a kid I kinda liked him, but he's just too obnoxious and annoying nowadays. I think that the movie loses absolutely nothing tonally or thematically if he's removed from the movie altogether. Dinosaur is a movie that doesn't necessarily need a comic relief character, and I feel that Zini adds absolutely nothing to the story except occasional bad jokes lol.
