Chris At The Pictures

Pterodactyl sacrifice! Men and dinosaurs living together! Mass hysteria! 

Well, sort of. Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur (after many, many years in the works) has finally arrived. We follow young, fear-stricken Apatosaurus Arlo in his journey home after a terrible event separates him from his family. Oh, and the asteroid that should have killed the dinosaurs missed, so we’re joined for the ride by tiny counterpart Spot, a scuffed and tousle-haired human toddler.

On a purely aesthetic level, this film serves one purpose: if you are one of those people who sees no use in CGI, who thinks film-making would be better if we went back to the seventies and refuses to let digital worlds draw you in; this film exists to prove you wrong. It is visually flawless. We're talking animation so advanced that if you removed the bouncy characters from the equation, there are moments where it could feasibly be shot amongst real-life mountain ranges, across sweeping plains, on the shores of pebbly-beached rivers.

Our companions through this extraordinary world are a mixed bag: Raymond Ochoa and Jack Bright are undeniably sweet as double act Arlo and Spot, but Frances McDormand and Jeffrey Wright feel a little thrown away in bit-part roles and Steve Zahn as Thunderclap appears to be doing an impression of Sam Rockwell all the way through. One genius piece of casting is Sam Elliot as a grizzled T-Rex cattle driver, who makes the very best of an out-of-place yet sumptuous Western chapter. Yes, a handful of the characters are fun to be around, but I just don’t think they’ll have the staying power that is the hallmark of Pixar’s roster.

Having to play second fiddle to Inside Out can’t be an easy thing, and having such a troubled production history doesn’t help. This unlucky combination of such an insightful predecessor and a jumbled mix of plotlines and ideas is just unfortunate happenstance: the film can’t help that it has nothing new to say. There are interesting ideas in it (the original premise is essentially rather brilliant), but they’re thoroughly underdeveloped, under-played in the comedy department and swept over by the gobsmacking vistas.

The story, too, has clearly suffered as a result of the change of director and re-writes: when the predictability sets in and we find ourselves traipsing through movements that even the child audience will have seen before, director Peter Sohn and co. tend to fall back on sugary weepiness. Yes, there is plenty of catharsis in the emotions, but again, it’s a lot of what we’ve seen done better by films like The Land Before Time, an animation which introduces extraordinarily important and adult themes (that we’ve rarely seen since) into a kids’ dinosaur adventure with charm and heartbreak to spare.

No, of course The Good Dinosaur isn’t a bad film. There is not a soul on this Earth who could possibly deny the beauty of the animation or the genuine emotional heft, even if these mainly serve as stand-ins for a more substantial story and fresher characters. The kids will be enthralled, but those of us who have come to expect greater things from Pixar won’t be fooled: running along the front rows of the cinema chopping onions is cheating, and they know it.

It’s all surface and no substance in this high-flying but heavy-handed prequel to the Peter Pan story, featuring characters ‘introduced by’ J.M. Barrie…no, really, that’s how the original author who created these marvellous stories is referred to in a two second snippet of the closing credits.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a young boy – subject of an ancient prophecy – is whisked away to a new world in order to defeat great evil while making his mother Mary (subtle, I know) proud. Peter (newcomer Levi Miller) is snatched from a dingy workhouse (itself snatched from Oliver Twist) by a band of pirates led by the dreaded Blackbeard (a hammy Hugh Jackman) and taken to Neverland. In the depths of Blackbeard’s fairy dust mines, Peter crosses paths with a young James Hook (Garett Hedlund), and the stage is set for all our characters to tread their first steps towards the story we all know and love.

Baymax establishes a new gold standard for animated features as one of the few comic relief characters that works as the heart of the movie rather than just the wacky sidekick. It doesn’t matter how many snippets of his performance you’ve already seen in trailers or TV spots, you’ll be left howling with laughter at the hapless healthcare companion tottering about on ridiculous inflated legs or deflating into a drunken stupor as his battery drains.

The remainder of the cast are all wonderfully enjoyable to be around, just swerving around the usual stereotypes. Particularly watchable (or listenable) is Ryan Potter as child prodigy Hiro who provides the straight character to Baymax’s bumbling, as is Daniel Henney as older brother Tadashi. The collated teen heroes manage not to blend into one with even Damon Wayans Jr. and T.J. Miller managing not to insight annoyance (though Jason Mewes of Jay and Silent Bob should sue for Miller’s character Fred).

San Fransokyo is the sumptuous backdrop against which the story is set, a glorious fusion of American and Japanese architecture that very cleverly skirts the ‘tourist spot’ factor by merging landmarks of both cultures into one. It’s a setting you feel you could get lost in for hours, not least because the visuals of the film are simply gorgeous. Skyscrapers, explosions and futuristic marvels are all beautifully realised using Disney’s brand spanking-new Hyperion rendering system (a visual accessory that threatens to dethrone How To Train Your Dragon 2 as the most stunning animation work of the past year).

Though it’s wonderful to see a superhero film that doesn’t take itself seriously or carry pretentions above its station, the knowing winks to such genre films can’t save the somewhat predictable plot. You’ll be having fun, but it’s very managed and occasionally procedural fun that does cause one to question whether the superhero origins story – no matter how uniquely told, charmingly acted and beautifully mounted – is past it’s prime. In the end, Big Hero 6 has the best of intentions and more than delivers, with echoes of The Iron Giant and Toy Story bouncing around within a fun, fast and family-friendly romp.