Dinosaur, DVD Review

I remember first seeing the trailer for this at the cinema. I believe I had gone to see Sleepy Hollow and while we were settling in this trailer came on. I remember being overwhelmed by how good it looked and thinking ‘That is one film I have to see’. Several months later the film came out and the reviews started appearing. I was rather disappointed to see every review describe it as fairly poor or mediocre at best.

I ended up missing it at the cinema and when news of the DVD Special Edition came out, I was in two minds whether or not to get it. Eventually I decided to give it a shot. To tell the truth, I think I’m just a sucker for Collectors Editions and Box Sets. I just can’t resist those flash shiny boxes. So now that it’s here I’m actually glad that I bought it. I’ll tell you why in a moment, but first some disk details.

Plot

After a long and wonderfully animated opening scene (I won’t got into details, but if you’ve seen the trailer then you know already), an Iguanodon egg ends up on a remote island inhabited by a group of Lemurs. The lemurs take the Dinosaur in and name him Aladar; they raise it as their own. Years later a meteor storm forces them to leave the Island and escape to the mainland.

Lost in a strange new land they come across a herd of various Herbivore dinosaurs that are trying to find a green and fertile land where they can settle. They join the herd and soon find that things are quite different to life on the island. The herd needs to move as fast as it can as they are being pursued by a pair of vicious Carnotaur’s.

Audio / Video

The disk comes with a 1.85:1 Anamorphic[Widescreen format picture. If you’ve seen the Toy Story or Bugs Life DVD releases then you’ll know what to expect from a direct digital transfer. If you haven’t seen these transfers then let me promise you that they provide the best picture quality you’ve ever seen on a DVD. Dinosaur is not exception to this rule. Because this is a direct digital transfer you can forget terms like film scratches or marks on the print. You just need take a good look at one of the close ups of a lemur and see the detail level on it’s hair to see how good this picture quality is.

This review is based on the DTS 5.1 audio track on the disk. The soundtrack is excellent and utilise all the speaker channels to a great extent. All dialogue is perfectly crisp and clear and the musical score is very dramatic and effective. The LFE (Subwoofer) channel gets a good pounding in places, in particular the meteor storm sequence.

Extras

What are the extras like on this disk? Well how long have you got? Seriously this two disk set is packed with extra, I’ll try to be as brief as possible otherwise this review will just go on an on.

Disk 1

The first Audio Commentary feature is from the Directors, Visual Effects Supervisor and Digital Effects Supervisor This is a very good commentary track with loads of insight into the various methods used to film each scene and also plenty of background info on the scripting, plot development etc. One of the things that struck me was the amount of locations throughout the world that were used in this film. They explain how during the opening sequence with the eggs journey, they switch from one location to another and then another, very impressive.

The second Audio Commentary features a host of Production Team members. The commentary is host by Producer Pam Marsden who introduces each commentary member outlining their roles and responsibilities in the film. I actually enjoyed this second commentary more than the first one as it gave far more information about the processes used in the making of this film.

Film Fact Fossil Dig is a collection of behind the scenes features that you can view in several different ways. You can have a fossil icon appear on screen while you watch the film. Selecting this icon will bring up the featurette relevant to that particular scene. Alternatively you can watch all of the featurette’s separately via the extras menu. Finally you can watch the featurette’s via the chapter selections.

The remaining extras on Disk one are aimed squarely at children. They consist of games and information pages that are narrated by an extremely annoying American kid. They include Aladars Adventure a point and click adventure game set in the cave scene. Dinosearch is a basic find the pieces of the Dinosaur game. Finally Dinopedia uses the same annoying narrator to give some Palaeontological information about the Dinosaurs featured in the film.

Disk 2

Disk 2 starts up with a rather cool alternative version of the early Carnotaur chase scene. Once this has finished your presented with the main menu in the form of a PC on a desk, the options are selectable from the monitor. The main menu is split into six categories, these are:

Development
Creating the Characters
The Production Process
Music & Sound
Abandoned Scenes
Publicity

Each of these menus branches of into sub categories that contain video clips, featurettes, still photos, animations and more. There really is too much here to go into heavy detail on as the review would go on forever. Suffice to say, there is a lot of material here if you want it.

I also noticed several Easter Eggs on this second DVD that contain deleted scenes and some short extract from old Disney productions hosted by Walt Disney himself.

Overall

Having now watched it several times I think that the reviews I had read were being rather unfair. I personally enjoyed it very much, it’s not the greatest Disney ever as far as plot goes, but it certainly stands up well. The story seems to start off as your basic Tarzan type plot but soon develops into something more. It is of course your standard good against evil story, but then again so is Star Wars.

The effects have to be seen to be believed, the combination of real footage with CG Dinosaurs works faultlessly and there’s plenty of interaction between the CG and the backgrounds to make the whole thing more realistic. I have to say that I was more impressed with the animation of the Lemurs than the Dino’s. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Dino animation, but the level of detail on the small Mammals faces and the way the body hair reacts to the environment (wind, rain etc.) is incredible.

So, any complaints? Well as far as the film goes the one character that irritated me was the small Dinosaur that was styled to act like a dog would with a lapping tongue, fetching sticks etc. Considering that the rest of the characters were obviously fairly true to current Dinosaur theories (apart from talking of course) this one just didn’t seem to fit.

The other problem I had the first time I watched it was that I just couldn’t get my head around Dinosaurs talking. It wasn’t so bad on the second viewing because I’d accepted it. Luckily none of the Dinosaurs ever burst into song during the film, I think
it would have been just too much for me if they had.

One other thing to watch out for is player compatibility problems. I know that there have been several reports of this special edition not working on certain DVD players. I watched it on a Pioneer 525, and I had some issues with it. Although the film played fine, I couldn’t pause it or skip chapters while it was playing. It also took me several attempts to remove the captions when playing in DTS mode.

I would recommend this disk set to anyone, especially if you have young children. The effects are gobsmackingly awesome and the Digital Transfer more than does this justice. The audio quality is exceptional and the disks are packed with features for both adults and children alike.

The only things to be concerned about are any compatibility problems you may have with your player and suitability for very young children. The film is actually rated PG and there are some scenes of mild violence, but hey it’s a Dinosaur movie after all.

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