We're back! A Dinosaur Story

Movie Review

1993

Amblimation

John Goodman voices a T-Rex cleverly named Rex in an animated movie that showed up in theaters and was completely forgotten in the same way dinosaurs became extinct. Directed by Steven Spielberg is no surprise that this was aimed to have a nice, little message for kids in a time era where SNES and Sega Genesis were trying to get their attention away from anything resembling a movie.

So it starts with Rex telling his life story to a hatchling blue jay bird that wants nothing to do with his bully siblings and join the circus, because that is one way to keep a kid around, a total stranger who is most likely eat said bird telling his story to teach him some sort of lesson. Flashback to the era of dinosaurs, where Rex is fed smart cereal to make him intelligent, or as intelligent as a dinosaur can become, while introduced to other three dinos who were also kidnapped and forced to evolved. Rex immediately makes friends with Woog, a Triceratops, Dweeb, a...something, and Elsa, a Pterodactyl who instantly calls him handsome and tries her best to hit on him while Rex tries to stay as far away from her as possible. Elsa also seems to be high all the time mind you.

He meets them all and they invite him to have something he learns is called lunch, because when you are a dinosaur with no brain in the wild, lunch could mean anything in particular, something you just eat then worry about it later. So then, they feast upon gigantic hot dogs roasting around something resembling a heating lamp. Yes, Triceratops were carnivores, don't let any other silly movie about such tell you they were in fact herbivores...oh.

The now intelligent dinos then are introduced to a scientist who resembles Einstein without the accent named Neweyes (sigh), who is in fact the guy who is behind the super smart cereal they ingested, and he promptly reveals his motives as to why he chose dinosaurs to give such food upon, instead of say, well, you know I am not going too far about this, lets just say when he said he just wanted to give back to society after his success as an inventor there is a lot to theorize about his ulterior motives.

Using some other invention which he explains can hear children's wishes (creepy factor: rising), he shows the foursome group what every kid wants in life, from some kid pushing a wooden plank with wheels wishing he had friends, to a little girl wishing she had a thanksgiving hat, all this in the dial pointing to modern day earth no less. Yes, in an era where videogames are what kids might want to get instead of anything else, having such like wooden toys and hats are the top priority. Hm, yeah, I had thought back then my expectations about life were low.

All this while children laughter fill the room they are all in no less... (creepy factor: all time high)

The scientist tells them he will travel fast forward in time to leave them in present day New York so they can all fulfill the children's wishes, because dinosaurs can do such things without anything else happening like panic terror of having a T-Rex around people could ever happen. He states another elderly woman with poor vision will help them settle in a Museum (yes, this is going somewhere now), and that they must be very cautious of his dark, mad scientist brother called Screweyes (what's with the names?) who is that way because he lost his eye and now just wants to make the world suffer. Otherwise they are good to go.

So let me just stop here for a second. A genius who invents mind reading devices and food that makes you super intelligent can't deal with his own brother who lets him have his way and on top of that won't even help the dinosaurs who have no clue what the future holds for them as long as they avoid that guy? Who's the real villain here?

Anyway, they land quite fancy in parachute on Manhattan river, where they meet their first human friend, a kid named Louie, who happened to be one of many they saw wishing of anything back then. Louie has no clue what they are, which is quite baffling because he even asks if Elsa is a bat, to which she counters in such an offended way that she is in fact, a Pterodactyl. Wait, how did she know what a bat was anyway? Oh, the smart cereal thing, I get it.

No, no I don't.

So Louie goes on in exchange to introduce them to modern times, they all help him get into the Circus, his lifelong dream...wait, didn't he said he wanted to have friends? Consistency is not part of this movie so it seems. Speaking of such, do you know now why Rex decided to tell his life story to that bird now?

On their way they meet another kid, amply named Cecilia Nuthatch (Oh boy). Louie in a traditional New York fashion introduces himself and Elsa, while directing to the girl as "babe". Kids sure aren't that subtle here. She immediately recognizes Louie's friends to be dinosaurs, which Woog laughs and states he is hungry, then corrects himself telling her his own name. Don't know about you, but if I ever meet a carnivore triceratops making jokes about being hungry while introducing himself, you wouldn't even see my dust as I Sonic dash out of view. In a New York minute we suddenly are treated to Cecilia and Louie all of the sudden oogling each other while Rex makes a fake growl to indicate the obvious. I do believe the lack of subtly in this same paragraph. Louie then gets this grand idea of using the Thanksgiving parade as a cover to get the dinos through the crowd-filled streets so he may get his chance of being a Clown finally. Seeing that all kids pointing wishing them to be real dinosaurs, Rex then gets into his groove zone and begins the movie's first musical number, convincing the kids they are in fact, real dinosaurs, and then panic ensues while the public sans kids run for their lives. Well, they also get their kids along with them of course.

Louie stating the obvious tells them to split up and meet in Central Park, where the circus he is searching for happens to be. Rex and the rest look into a poster of said circus with Doctor Screweyes (the supposed bad guy evil brother of the movie) happens to own that place. They realize Louie and Cecilia are heading into the bad guy's greasy hands! Oh snap! Before they venture to save them however, NYPD appears and tries to capture them. The dinos of course, realize these guys can't be trusted so they bail out of the way. A chase ensues, with Rex using a ford truck as his personal skateboard, Woog and Dweeb on a motorcycle, while Elsa flies for dear life trying to dodge the fuzz persecuting her in helicopters, squawking all the way. Screw that, its every dino for themselves! In an ending scene resulting them all being blasted right to Central Park, they try on finding the kids, who by then have found Screweyes' circus in the heart of Central Park, which resembles more or less that other forest from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Hey, at least this animated movie got something right!

In an act of bravery, Cecilia once again tries to get into Louie's pants, but he just shrugs her off, the circus is more important than making out. There they sign a contract with Doctor Screweyes...in blood, meaning he can keep them and make them his part of his show for a good chunk of their lives (also meaning forever). The dinos come just in time to realize the evil Doctor's plans as he shows them his fright radio, which allows him to see children's fears in a discomforting display of ghostly children screaming and crying all around (creepy factor: DING DING DING DING DING!). He feeds some of his Brain Drain pills to Louie and Cecilia, reverting them into monkeys (I ain't joking here folks), to persuade the dinos on either gulping said pills and become his fright show, or having said kids in it instead. Obviously enough, they decide to become his main attraction, and while they are scaring the poop out of every member in the audience of the circus, Louie, Cecilia, and Stubbs, a clown they befriend, try and get them back by demonstrating them the power of kindness. Elsa also shows her own type of kindness towards Rex about wanting to have an egg, which I will not even bother too much thinking about. Coincidentally, the good ol' Scientist responsible for pitting them all in this mess appears just in time to shake his finger at Screweyes who is then left by himself and in the most darkest display ever shown in a family movie thus far, gets swallowed up by a bunch of crows.

The dinos then appear in the museum and make every single kid's wish true as Neweyes asked them to do, because every kid in the movie wanted to see a dinosaur, so mission accomplished! Rex then tells the bird to remember his story as he places him in his mother's care, which is a complete head scratcher being that all this made absolutely no sense. Oh yeah, he states Louie and Cecilia were a cute couple went back to their parents who obviously had no idea where they were this whole time and everyone (except Screweyes) lived happily ever after. The end.

Steven sure has a thing for dinos, and is no surprise he launched this animated film in theaters in a time where his other dino movie Jurassic Park was already the talk of town in the entire world. Being as such, it made little sense to create such film as this one, much less having it in theaters when his most successful movie about dinosaurs in all their glory was already something that kids and adults alike had their wish fulfilled about prehistoric behemoths running rampart.

John Goodman and Jay Leno try their hardest to voice their characters and it shows that they were ready to finish the movie as soon as it started, with little than favorable results. The cliché good guy has an evil brother and thus the cause of al misfortunes is so badly used here that there is little to even consider as to why Neweyes even bothered getting prehistoric beings to do HIS job of putting Screweyes in his place. Kinda like an asshole Obi Wan that would not even care about admitting his own faults when telling Luke Skywalker the truth from the beginning in Star Wars. Animation is basic, but pretty fair to be honest. Giving it that Don Bluth's kinda flair at times.

The point and moral of the story in We're Back! Gets lost and almost forgotten entirely, and there is little to show that it could pass as a memorable family film unlike other of Steven Spielberg's films like the ones Fievel the mouse was featured on. If anything We're Back! A Dinosaur Story would be good for is to make kids kill time when parents are ready to have time on their own from the stress accumulated in a day. Even then I do believe they would rather watch Jurassic Park anyway.

As a final thought, I wonder if Elsa was just so desperate to get laid in a family film. Well...

C-