Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story Blu-ray Movie Review

Jurassic World.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 6, 2018

Dinosaur frenzy was in full force back in 1993. Director Steven Spielberg's tentpole blockbuster Jurassic Park opened that Summer to widespread critical and audience acclaim and would go on to make more than a billion dollars at the box office. Just months later, the animated film We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story arrived in theaters, produced by Spielberg's own Amblin Entertainment. It was just little less successful in theaters, earning less than 1/100th the revenue. Whether dinosaur fatigue, audiences realizing they weren't going to see a better dinosaur movie that year (if ever), or simply due to the wild and weird world We're Back cobbles together, it was no surprise that the film fell flat for filmgoers full from the more fruitful Jurassic Park.

What kind of movie is this again?

In prehistoric times, an alien vessel lands on Earth, takes four dinosaurs, and gives them a substance called "Brain Gain." After taking the supplement, the dinosaurs gain human-like intelligence. The four -- a Tyrannosaurus named Rex (voiced by John Goodman), a Triceratops named Woog (voiced by Rene LeVant), a Parasaurolophus named Dweeb (voiced by Charles Fleischer), and a Pteranodon named Elsa (voiced by Felicity Kendal) -- are then transported to modern-day Earth by order of Captain Neweyes (voiced by Walter Cronkite), inventor of the Brain Gain formula, who hopes that by making dinosaurs that can interact with children, he will fulfill many a child's most deeply-held wish. On their way to the Museum of Natural History, the dinosaurs meet a pair of hard-luck children, Louie (voiced by Joey Shea) and Cecilia (voiced by Yeardley Smith), who befriend the creatures. But when the disillusioned children sign their lives away to perform in a dark and devious circus operated by Neweyes' nefarious brother Professor Screweyes (voiced by Kenneth Mars), who wishes to expose children to their worst nightmares, the dinosaurs find themselves in a high-stakes battle against a powerful foe.

We're Back! is based on a children's novel of the same name by Hudson Talbott, originally published in 1987. How closely the film follows the book this reviewer cannot say, but the film adaptation is a peculiar creature. Here's a film that brings dinosaurs to the modern world but does so not through recovered DNA but rather alien intervention and brain enhancement food. The film eventually leads the dinosaurs, and a pair of human protagonists, to a weirdly dark circus that deals in nightmares and demons. It nearly borders on the surreal and the macabre in a couple of places. It goes terrifyingly dark for a few moments but largely bears the fruit of a fairly light, though always weird, spirit of zany adventure that does its best -- which is not always good enough -- to capitalize on the oddity of seeing dinosaurs roam today's world, in a much more family-friendly approach than some of the Jurassic Park films that showed the dinosaurs killing and rampaging rather than, mostly, having fun or fighting to fend off bad guys.

The film has no less than four credited directors (Dick and Ralph Zondag, Phil Nibbelink, and Simon Wells), a fact on which one might reasonably assign blame for a film as tonally scattered and strange as this. But there's more than enough room to poke and prod and try to uncover what goes wrong in the film and what went wrong along the way of making it. Whether bizarre source material, clashing artistic visions, or a story that's simply not all that interesting whether in the post-Jurassic Park world or otherwise, it's not difficult to find possible reasons for the lackluster finished product. Lacking ambition, scattered in tone, and limited in scope, the movie never quite feels like it has a chance to take off.

One area of strength comes by way of the voice cast. The filmmakers have assembled an impressive collection of A-list talent that includes individuals from Hollywood proper and beyond, featuring screen icons like John Goodman and Martin Short and branching out include Newsman Walter Cronkite, TV Chef Julia Child, and late night host Jay Leno. The cast is collectively enthusiastic, works well together, and brings more life to the characters than the scattered script otherwise suggests.

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story's 1080p transfer isn't half bad. The movie looks a bit dated and aged but holds up thanks to the added clarity the resolution affords the material and the more stable colors the format yields. The film's grain structure is a little dense and snowy, a few short bursts of banding are visible, the odd baked-on speckle appears, a few edge halos occasionally interfere, and a few shots appear overly processed and artificially sharpened. All that said, the image largely satisfies otherwise, at least under the somewhat crude animated constraints. Lines are fairly clean and elements find an agreeable sharpness, whether moving foreground pieces or static backgrounds in prehistoric jungles or dense urban environments. The color palette lacks splash and dazzle as the film begins, though some festive splashes emerge in the city as the dinosaurs parade down the street, for example, in chapter nine. This Blu-ray does handle some of the darker shadows and corners at the circus later in the film with commendable stability and depth.

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 loses soundtrack. The opening Jazzy music offers impressive front-end width and smooth, detailed instrumental clarity. Surrounds are used sparingly, but still audibly, allowing the fronts to carry most of the fun. Music is similarly presented for the duration. The track presents a few fun effects, including a large, stage-immersing, surround-heavy hollowness when Buster falls into the cup on the golf course early in the film or when various sounds reverb through a space ship a few minutes later, this time with some impressively added depth accompanying a few deep growls. The sense of place and openness is quite impressive. Some might call these moments a little over-engineered but the net effect is really quite fun. Likewise, modern day New York City sound details create a large, open, immersive sense of place and space, including traffic din that maneuvers from side to side with seamless stage traversal. Dialogue is never particularly problematic, playing with natural front-middle positioning and only transitioning away as necessary, including an early scene when baby birds playfully yell and scream from one side of the front to another.

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story contains no supplemental content. The release does not ship with DVD or digital copies. No slipcover is included.

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story is both an interesting and disappointing film, one with plenty of clout behind it but a film unable to settle on a tone or fall into a rhythm. It's blessed with a top-flight voice cast but maneuvers around and through oddities that never allow the film to gel. Ranging from alien abduction to secret formulas, from desperate kids to macabre circus acts, all with a foursome of living, intelligent dinosaurs roaming about modern New York, it's a mad scientist concoction that goes down harshly and leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Universal's Blu-ray delivers solid high definition video and an extremely good 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Unfortunately no extras are included. Recommended.