The Christmas Dinosaur: A Review
Happy holidays everyone! What better way to celebrate the festive season at Mesozoic Mind then a christmas film about prehistory? Well options are VERY limited, so the only thing I can find is something from the time-honoured tradition of crappy, cheap animated christmas specials, The Christmas Dinosaur (2004). Created by the sadly now-defunct PorchLight Entertainment, it tells the story of a young dinosaur-obsessed kid named Jason Barnes who decides sneak into the Christmas presents gifted to him, only to discover the one for him isn't the toy he wanted, but a real egg that hatches into a Quetzalcoatlus. Which is you know, not a dinosaur? Even the target audience knew better, not to mention the film keeps flip-flopping on calling it a dinosaur versus (correctly) a pterosaur. Anyways, he adopts it as a pet, and has fun with it as it grows up while having to dodge his parents and his nosy, grumpy neighbour to keep them from finding out about the flapling, but when Spot gets lonely, Jason must find where Spot comes from and return him to his true home. However, Spot gets to give Jason and his town one last parting gift in the form of a parade of dinosaurs, and everyone has a Merry Christmas.
The animation for the special, courtesy of one Escotoonz? Pretty bad to say the least, if not painfully generic.
Also, it turned out one of the other animation studios for this was Slightly Off Beat Productions, meaning this is not the first dinosaur project they worked on.
The designs for the prehistoric creatures are also not very good. Spot is as generic a cartoon pterosaur as they come, cone crest and fish diet and all. I would give plaudits for not using a pterodactyl or Pteranodon, but when it barely resembles the long-necked and side-compressed crest and most importantly quadrupedal real thing, one wonders why they even did so. Also, the unibrow he has. Ick.
At the very least, the cartoony designs of the other dinosaurs, which are mix of Burianian and Paulian designs many cartoon dinosaurs would be in the 2000's, that show up at the end are appealing to look at and age better from an artistic standpoint, even if they evidently are as generic as the film and have all the innacuracies we've seen elsewhere (so I won't bother listing them).
The characters are pretty flat and undeveloped. Jason is downright annoying at times, being insufferable and rude the way he snaps and corrects people on dinosaur trivia; while from what I can tell he does get a bit nicer as the special goes on, it's not apparent on first watch. His younger brother Tommy is only slightly better, and the adults are quite cookie cutter if not non-existent. Only the afromentioned nosey neighbour has any personality of any kind in my book. Honestly, I find Spot himself is way more interesting then the humans combined, the way he grows over the film and expresses more eomtion then them.
The story is very by the numbers, not even in a fun way. Plot beats you've seen in every "Kid adopts weird pet" are on display here: Hiding the creature from your parents and buying tons of food for it! Spot frightening off bullies! Bittersweet farewell! I'm surprised there was no evil businessman as the villain who wanted to capture Spot and send out bumbling henchmen. Just about the only cliche (that I can think of) that doeesn't happen is the parents discovering Spot and forcing Jason to give him up despite his protests he's friendly (and even that one sort of happens at the end).
It doesn't help the runtime is only 47 minutes long, no doubt to fit into an hour long TV slot. Whike the pacing isn't too bad as it is, a few extra scenes to flesh out characterisation and story wouldn't hurt.
Also, for some reason, after the arrival to Dinosaur Glen (the lost world setting Spot came from), we keep seeing this little purple theropod to provide a few comic pratfalls, and even at the very end it enters the house. I don't know if this was meant to be a sequel hook, but if it wasn't, I'm baffled by the inclusion.
The music for the special by Craig Dobbin and Brian Mann, ehile not without its moment of charm, is (surprise surprise) quite generic and otherwise forgetable: you name a cliche of kid's movie, its in there. While not bad and competant, I kind of wish there were more snafus for me to point out.
If there's anything positive for it, I can at least have fun watching this, if only to mock it, and the way scenes play out are entertaining. Congrats, TCD. You did your job.
- Accuracy - 3/10
- Designs - 5/10
- Aging - 4/10
- Plot - 4/10
- Animation - 3/10
- Music - 4/10
- Storytelling - 5/10
- Rewatchability - 3/10
If you have fond memories of watching this as a kid, more power to you, but I don't exactly call The Christmas Dinosaur a must see for either palaeo-fans nor animation fans, and is overall too hokey, generic, and safe to be a memorable Christmas classic. It doesn't help that it aspires only to be for kids only, rather then incorporate elements that make it a family film (big difference between them) that can appeal to a wider range.
If I were in charge at Porchlight making this, I'd probably lengthen it to a full hour and change Spot to br an actual dinosaur, ideally a hadrosaur. As I mentioned before, make the villain an evil businessman who wants to capture Spot for whatever finiacial reason. At the same time, I'd give a character arc to Jason that may or may not exist however faintly in the original, where he becomes way more kind and caring after initially being a bratty jerk, particularly after his bad behaviour would end up exposing Spot and losing him temporarily, realising this is no way to treat others, before rallying others to free him and save Christmas. Corny, and cliched, yes, but unlike the current film, in a good way.
Well, it can only get better from here... and sorry if I was a bit of a grinch here with how negative I was. See you next time, and Happy Holidays!
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