Mini Reviews: The Good Dinosaur and Mockingjay Part 2

Mini Reviews: The Good Dinosaur and Mockingjay Part 2

The Good Dinosaur/Rated PG/Dir. by Peter Sohn/100 min./Pixar Animation Studios

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2/Rated PG-13/Dir. by Francis Lawrence/137 min./Lionsgate

The Good Dinosaur

It may have endured one of the more tumultuous gestation periods of any Pixar film, but The Good Dinosaur has finally arrived and it is a wholly unique and worthy entry into their canon of brilliance.

Of course, the most daunting challenge of this simple story of a boy (dinosaur) and his dog (human boy) is that it comes out the same year as Inside Out, one of Pixar's very best films.  However,  to compare the two is as misguided as comparing Fantasia with 101 Dalmatians just because they are both from Disney.  As it is, The Good Dinosaur stands on it's own quite well, thank you very much.

The story is an interesting combination of simple and surprising.  As the commercials have well shown, the central premise is that the dinosaurs never died off because the meteor missed the Earth.  What's interesting is that this premise has little to do with the story itself.  It's an American story, a settler's story.  It feels like the type of story that Disney himself would have championed in the 50's or 60's, just with actual people as pioneers of the American west instead of dinosaurs.  A little The Incredible Journey by way of Old Yeller (don't worry though, the dog doesn't get rabies).

While the story is simple, the animation is perhaps the most stunningly complex ever developed at the studio.  Aside from the admittedly cartoonish looking characters, this has the same eye candy delight as a DisneyNature documentary.  There's never a frame that isn't jaw-droppingly real and breaktakingly lush.  The visuals alone are worth the price of admission.  Fortunately, the movie is sweet, moving, and filled with worthwhile messages about overcoming self-doubt and embracing friendship, even with someone you once considered an enemy.

The Good Dinosaur gets a well-earned B

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

Mockingjay should have been one epic movie.  Period.  This trend of dividing books into half just to milk the franchise for all it's worth may be financially lucrative, but it's creatively bankrupt.  The ending of Part 1 felt jarringly abrupt and the beginning of Part 2 feels very poorly developed.  I'm excited to see these two joined together eventually so I can see a completely story, instead of the weird, separated-by-a-year, mini-series we get.

That having been said, The Hunger Games has been a smart, if brutal, pop culture phenomenon and the ending doesn't pull any punches.  This is a war movie, pure and simple.  The emotions are real and the threat is palpable.

However, a film like this begins and ends with the skills of the actors and each actor leaves nothing on the table.  Especially surprising was Josh Hutcherson's performance as Peeta, who up to this point in the series has been little more than Lois Lane to Katniss' (Jennifer Lawrence) Superman, constantly getting in trouble and constantly getting saved.  In Mockingjay Part 2, Peeta is given a little more meat to his character and Hutcherson delves into the role with relish.  Lawrence is terrific, as always, but she's doing the same "I don't want to be a hero, but I will if it's what's required" song and dance that she's perfected throughout the series.  Hutcherson feels like he's actually finding another level to his character, and that's a nice surprise.

Storywise, The Hunger Games has messages that are important, especially with current events that may blur the lines or right and wrong.  It does what great art is supposed to do, it makes us think a little more deeply about ourselves and about the human condition in general.  However, it just doesn't congeal as a complete movie.  It constantly feels lacking, and the biggest thing that's lacking is Part 1.

Grade : B (for Part 2 by itself), A- (for Mockingjay as a complete story)