Pixar has an amazing history of producing great movies. So when a movie comes out that's only good, people have a much higher tendency to discredit it and bash it. While The Good Dinosaur obviously wasn't Pixar's best, I genuinely enjoyed it.
Spoiler alert ahead:
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the movie was it's relative lack of a gigantic world that Pixar has become known for. For example, how many monsters would you say were in Monsters Inc.? Too many to count! Mike and Sully can't walk down the street without some clever gag involving a monster happening every five seconds. However, I'm pretty sure I can count on one hand the amount of different species of dinosaurs that appeared in the movie. While the backgrounds are beautiful, they're not as exciting as a multitude of dinosaurs. The world felt remarkably empty. While aesthetically pleasing, I'd rather see exciting characters at every turn.
Besides the world feeling empty, the plot felt remarkably empty too. Compared to the intricate plot line of Inside Out, this movie was devoid of any plot complications. It's a simple story of a dinosaur who wants to get back home. It's a simple series of adventures, with a simple character change of overcoming fears, with simple character designs. In some parts, it feels like the animators are just bored and need to fill up some space in the movie. Thus resulting in the weirdest drug trip since Dumbo.
However, PIxar yet again delivered those scenes that leave you wiping your eyes. What Pixar has taught us is the less information they give you, the more you have to invest yourself. Think about the Up montage. There's no dialogue, and you're filling in large parts of the story yourself. By the time Ellie dies, all that you invested in that scene dies with her. Same with both family scenes in The Good Dinosaur. There's very little dialogue, but so much is said. We don't learn how Spot's family died, so we invest our own story. We're emotionally moved by the combination of the story given to us and the story that we invest ourselves. In the other scene where Spot goes with a human family, we're moved both by the symbol of the circle drawn in the dirt and by the connection of Spot and Arlo because we're investing ourselves.
The Good Dinosaur isn't Pixar's best, but it's still a good movie. It's empty, but part of that gives way to beauty. And the tear-wrenching scenes that Pixar is known for were delivered in full force.
