Fresh of the smash success of this summer's Inside Out, Pixar returns with its latest animated feature The Good Dinosaur. 2015 marks the first time that the beloved animation studio has released two films in the same calendar year.
Its premise is simple, What if the asteroid that rendered dinosaurs extinct had missed the Earth? And, millions of years later, prehistoric humans lived side-by-side with the mighty beasts.
The film has had a rocky production to say the least. Originally intended to be Pixar's 2014 release, the film suffered numerous setbacks among which include a total overhaul of the story and a director and producer swap mid production.
Despite these tumultuous events, the film has finally made it to theatres. Has Pixar hit their second home-run of the year? Or is The Good Dinosaur destined to join the ranks of Cars and Monsters University in the lower ranks of the studio's catalog? Let's see the early feedback.
Entertainment Weekly's Kevin Sullivan gave the film a B- rating, saying the film is adequate animated fare that suffers from the misfortune of following up the far superior Inside Out.
He also took issue with the jarring disconnect between the cartoonishly drawn dinosaurs and the lifelike landscapes they inhabit.
IGN's Jim Vejvoda gave the film a 7.2 out of 10, saying the film retreads familiar Pixar story telling devices and doesn't bring much new to the table.
Variety's Justin Chang had similar words to Vejvoda writing that the film, "falls into that humbler category of Pixar efforts, like "Brave" and "A Bug's Life," that are content to riff engagingly on material we've seen before, rather than imagining an entirely new world from scratch."
The Good Dinosaur hits cinemas around the United States on November 25.
