Dinosaur

Dinosaur (2000) follows an Iguanodon raised by lemurs after hatching. A meteor strike drives the survivors into a mass migration in search of water and food, and the film moves along inside that march. Its technical idea was unusual for the time. The backgrounds were shot on real locations, in places like Venezuela, Samoa, Jordan and California, with computer generated dinosaurs placed on top. The landscape is real, the animals are not. Disney planned for a long time to make it without dialogue. The idea was that the animals would never speak and the film would run on image and music alone. That was abandoned and the characters were given voices, which became the thing critics objected to most. It runs 82 minutes. Good for: dinosaurs, visually ambitious animation, and short family films. Less good for: the story is a familiar journey and the characters are thin. The predator scenes are frightening for small children. The dialogue works against the visual seriousness; talking animals sit oddly on top of real landscapes.