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The Good Dinosaur | 2015 | PG | - 1.4.1

An animated feature about an alternate universe where dinosaurs and primitive humans coexist: an orphaned boy (voiced by Jack Bright) helps a young Apatosaurus (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) to find his family (voiced by Jeffrey Wright and Frances McDormand) after a fierce rainstorm washes the young dinosaur downstream. Also with the voices of Steve Zahn, Sam Elliott, Anna Paquinn, A.J. Buckley, Maleah Padilla and Marcus Scribner. Directed by Peter Sohn. [1:40]

SEX/NUDITY 1 - A very small boy wears a loincloth (he has no navel, nipples, or other distinctive anatomical features), a man wears furs that reveal a large belly but no navel, and a tiny girl wears a fur band around her chest, showing her stomach.

VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - A father dinosaur and his son run along a rock ledge as the father berates the son for being slow until the younger animal falls and sprains a leg; heavy rains, lighting, and loud thunder begin and the father slips below the ledge when looking up at his son, a tidal wave of muddy water washes over him and the screen goes black; the screen comes back up on a sunny field in which there's a tombstone made of three short, medium-thick tree trunks, signifying the father's death.
 The father of a family of dinosaurs dies in a fierce thunderstorm, while his youngest son is washed away, bruised and cut (we see a cut on the foreleg with a bit of blood along with red bruises). We see the carcass of a bison on the ground with flies buzzing over it. A human boy bites a T-rex on the leg, resulting in a roar that brings out three velociraptors with mullet hairdos. A raptor bites a T-rex on the neck two different times, without blood. Three raptors push a T-rex over, but a larger T-rex tosses two of the raptors far away across a wide field as another raptor falls off-screen. Water washes a boy and a dinosaur into a river and over a waterfall; the dinosaur carries the boy out of the river, but the boy is unconscious until the animal blows air onto his face.
 Five pterodactyls fly above swirling clouds with their beaks sticking below fog and mist; the predators attack a boy and a long-necked dinosaur and capture the little boy, flying him off-screen; the dinosaur falls over a short cliff, becoming ensnared in vines and a rock hits him on the head (he has a near-death experience where he sees his dead father clear away the vines and lead him away, silently); the dinosaur awakens and wrenches free of the vines, then runs to a river, where the attackers have the boy confined inside a tree trunk. A boy jumps up, biting a large piece out of a pterodactyl's wing (no blood is shown). Four pterodactyls fly away and a dinosaur knocks the last one out of the sky by tossing a heavy limb at it. A long cobra with four short legs attacks a dinosaur with snapping fangs, and a little boy growls and jumps on it; the snake coils around the boy, who bites it on the neck (no blood), and it runs away. A little boy bites a dinosaur on the leg to make it fall across a break in a ledge and form a bridge.
 A number of dangerous looking animals appear a few times, including a hissing cobra with large fangs and four legs and a winged beetle the size of a human child; a small boy rips the head off in his teeth after we see two pairs of its snapping mouth pincers in close-up (the torn neck shows light blue bubbly flesh). T-rexes roar into the camera three times in close-up. A T-rex plays a large insect as if it were a harmonica, then swallows it and we see large, dirty dinosaur teeth.
 An asteroid ring jostles about and bumps an asteroid onto a trajectory towards Earth: the rock catches fire as it enters the atmosphere and bypasses the planet and we see it streak past in the night sky. Two scenes and a black-and-white flashback depict loud thunderstorms with close-ups of branched lightning, funnel clouds, and heavy rain; in each scene, a deluge floods a river with a sort of muddy tidal wave and in one of the scenes, a muddy waterfall appears and water seems to flow out toward the audience.
 We see a lightning bug in close-up, including legs and mouthparts; it lights up and floats away as a cloud of such insects light up a night field and fly into the sky. Three T-rexes are ranchers who raise dangerous looking longhorn bison (in one instance the bison stampedes). A small dinosaur helps T-rexes by standing on top of a rock and trying to roar to bring out rustlers, but his voice squeaks. Three T-rexes and a small dinosaur roar loudly after several raptors. A boy and a dinosaur look sad and both howl at the moon. A boy howls like a wolf and a man in furs in the background howls back.
 Three pterodactyls use a small dinosaur to help them rescue a fox-type animal from under a tree and one of the raptors swallows it; the other two flying reptiles grab the tail hanging out of the first predator's mouth and they argue amongst themselves. Three pterodactyls attack a boy, but cannot capture him while two T-rexes nearby wrestle in fun, and then see the attack and toss the three flying reptiles far away into the background. A young dinosaur chases a human boy and shouts, they slip off a rock ledge and fall into a river and the dinosaur falls unconscious when knocked on the head by a rock under water and the screen goes black; the screen comes up with the animal coming to. A young dinosaur falls, gets a hind leg caught between two rocks and goes to sleep; when he awakens we see handprints showing where a small human dug around the rocks to free the leg. A boy brings a dinosaur a small, panting lizard to eat, but it runs away and he then brings a giant beetle, but the dinosaur knocks it away with a stick. A boy smells a small amount of bison hair and runs on all fours to find a herd of animals; he stops and swallows a large grasshopper leaving one leg of it sticking out of his mouth. Falling into a river, a dinosaur comes up covered with leeches, yelps, and incurs several red marks on its green skin. Trying to reach berries on a tree, a dinosaur falls off a rock and hits his head on a tree trunk, but no damage occurs. A boy and a dinosaur blow air into groundhog holes and shoot the small animals into the air; the animals fall to the ground, unharmed, but angry-looking as they lower themselves back into the ground while staring at the boy and the dinosaur and one of the rodents bites the dinosaur on the leg and the dinosaur yelps. An adult female dinosaur collapses under a load of corn she tries to carry out of a field, with red circles of exhaustion under her eyes. An adult female dinosaur lies on her four knees and bites dead cornstalks out of the ground.
 Traveling together, a boy and a dinosaur hear many wolf calls in the distance; a mother, father, and two small children approach slowly and offer to take the little boy, using a few hand signs (the boy and the dinosaur hug and cry before the boy leaves with his new family).
 A cross-eyed dinosaur says that he is meditating when he turns his eyes into his head and hums "Hmm," and then attempts to name a human boy, calling him "killer, hemorrhoid, murderer, funeral planner, lunatic and freak"; the boy answers to "Spot." A T-rex says to a long-necked dinosaur, "If you're pulling my leg, I'm going to eat yours." A dinosaur says to a boy, "I'm gonna squeeze the life out of you." A little boy sets up three sticks in sand to represent himself and his parents, then buries the "parents." A dinosaur knocks over a stick that he set up previously to represent his own dead father.
 A large dinosaur cuts a tree in half with his tail and tosses the top onto a pile as he is clearing trees from his farm fields; later he pulls a small tree up by the roots and tosses it away. A young dinosaur sets a net trap in a tree to catch a corn stealer and his father shows him how to use a club to smash the culprit, using a pumpkin as a demonstration; the net catches a tiny human that growls and snarls and the young dinosaur screams a couple of times and then lets the human go, and the father dinosaur yells at his son. A dinosaur falls and accidentally cuts a tall tree in half. A male baby dinosaur picks up a stick and hits his father's leg, an eggshell, and his tiny brother's behind with it, but the father says to stop.
 A young dinosaur is afraid of chickens and one bird chases and pecks at him as he feeds it corn. We hear that a chicken is called Footless Fran, because she has only one foot, but we do not see her. In two scenes, several chickens chase a dinosaur across the screen in the background as the dinosaur screams. An adolescent dinosaur pretends to be dying in a chicken pen and his younger brother runs to help; the first animal has a chicken puppet on his tail and pecks the second animal with it, embarrassing him.
 T-rexes around a campfire show off scratches and shallow scars on legs and chins from ranching. A female T-rex shows her blunt tail, saying that she bit the end off to escape another animal. An elderly T-rex says that he battled crocodiles and one bit his face (we can see the line of a scar); he says that he bit one croc in half, and he drowned another one in his [the T-rex's] own blood.
 A large dinosaur inhales a mouthful of water and sprays it over his corn crop. A young dinosaur spits water at her brother, who takes a larger mouthful and sprays it at her, covering a cornfield; she thanks him for doing her work for her as her mother compliments her on the watering (he looks a bit angry).
 A boy sits behind a rock after awaking one morning and defecating implied; the dinosaur looks at him and the boy looks annoyed, the dinosaur looks away, and the camera cuts to the boy much farther away, sitting behind a log.

LANGUAGE 1 - Some name-calling (sneak, prickle bush, cluckers, crazy critter, critter, coward, dumb, lying son of a crawdaddy, yellowbelly), some exclamations (arrrgh, dang, shut your mouth).

SUBSTANCE USE - A boy and a dinosaur see large red berries and berry pits on the ground where flies swarm and buzz and the boy and the dinosaur eat some berries and hallucinate (they see each other with huge heads) as the camera pulls back to show that the characters have exchanged heads and are running and laughing hysterically.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Fear, danger, bullies, being lost, death, loss, courage, sacrifice, helping others, cooperation, teamwork, accomplishments, becoming worthy, people who are different, inter-species and race relations, friendship, understanding, love, trust, starting over.

MESSAGE - Everyone can make a good mark on the world.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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