Dinosaur DVD
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 Rating: - A very likable movie, if you know what you're watching.
First off, this movie is a Disney animated fantasy. It isn't "Walking with Dinosaurs," and was never meant to be, any more than Disney's "Hercules" was meant to be a serious examination of ancient Greek mythology. Disney made a number of choices about this movie as a story, rather than an documentary. They included lemurs to add a touch of the familiar, and because they are humanoid enough for people to be able to relate to them. They didn't use one of the mammal-like critters that actually lived alongside the dinosaurs, because it's hard to relate to something that looks like a carnivorous rat.

There is some violence in the movie, and it definitely does deserve a PG rating. The scene where the lemurs' island is wiped out in the meteor impact is fairly intense, and the main adversaries are a pair of carnotaurs, giant predators similar to the more famous T-rex. Since they relate to the world mainly by biting things, you should probably preview this movie before letting small children watch it. The main conflict in the movie is actually between the orphaned hero Aladar and the herd leader, Kron. Kron firmly believes in that the strong will live, and that the weak should perish. Aladar was raised by lemurs, and believes that everyone, even the old and "weak" have value, and that strength comes from working together. Needless to say, they don't get along very well. Kron also sees the younger Aladar as a potential threat to his authority as herd leader.

Overall, this is an enjoyable popcorn movie. While it doesn't match the level of storytelling set by "The Lion King" or "Beauty and the Beast," I don't think it ever really meant to. And it is at least as watchable as the original "Land Before Time." (The first one, not the endless wretched sequels.) The computer animation is very well done, and the various creatures are believably merged with the real landscapes that were used as backgrounds. And the movie is *at least* as historically accurate as any other Disney movie. :)

Be warned that this particular movie is known to have hardware compatibility problems with some DVD players. One of the other reviewers here included a list of machines that are confirmed to have issues with this disk. I personally have ended up having to buy this movie twice, because the first disk I purchased was defective and wouldn't run on *any* machine, but that appears to have been a fluke manufacturing defect, like buying a toaster that doesn't have a power cord.

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