The Good Dinosaur (PG)
Disney Movies; Disney Wiki; IMDb; Pixar; Pixar Wiki; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Disney+; Google Play; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 2015, but I didn't see it until 2024. It was accompanied theatrically by the short film Sanjay's Super Team. While it made back more money than the cost of production, it lost money when you include the cost of marketing. I must admit, it's far from my favorite Pixar film, but it's still good, and I don't think it deserved to be a box office failure. It did take me awhile to get into it, but I thought it got more interesting as it progressed. And the background animation was awesome.

It begins 65 million years ago, with an asteroid hurtling toward Earth... and just barely missing the planet, which means the dinosaurs never went extinct. The main story is set millions of years later. There's an Apatosaurus family who are corn farmers. The parents watch their three eggs hatch, and name their babies Libby, Buck, and Arlo, the latter being the runt of the litter (despite hatching from the biggest egg). Years pass, and the three youngsters start growing up and helping with the farm work, but Arlo can't do everything his siblings do. And he's even afraid of the chickens he's supposed to feed. Meanwhile, a young, feral human boy is constantly stealing the dinosaurs' corn, so the father dinosaur, Henry, sets a trap for him and has Arlo stand watch, with instructions to kill the boy. When he finally is caught in the trap, Arlo lets him go, to his father's disappointment.

Well, some stuff happens that I don't want to spoil, but eventually Arlo and the boy get washed away in a river, taking them far from Arlo's home. At first Arlo blames the boy for... all his problems. But over time, the two of them bond, despite the boy not speaking and basically acting like a dog. And Arlo eventually names the boy "Spot". As they make their way home, they have various adventures, often dangerous, and meet other dinosaurs both friendly and unfriendly. I don't want to spoil any details of that, but things often take surprising turns. Oh, and Arlo gets hurt pretty frequently, so I felt pretty bad about that. (I'm not sure if it was meant to be played for laughs or not, but I definitely wasn't laughing.) Anyway, Arlo eventually makes his way home, so there's a relatively happy ending. Man, am I leaving out a lot of details, though.