Dinosaurs were a big thing in the ‘90s. Oh boy, were they a thing. When Steven Spielberg’s friend Michael Crichton mentioned that he was working on a dinosaur-cloning sci-fi novel, the veteran director knew that he had found his next project, committing to a film adaptation before the book had even been published. Jurassic Park became one of the biggest movies of all time, and positioned dinosaurs squarely in the zeitgeist of the early 1990s. From the never-ending Land Before Time straight-to-video saga, to Roland Emmerich’s hilariously awful take on Godzilla, and all the Spielberg-adjacent ventures in between, dinosaurs were an essential pillar in the x-treme '90s childhood idyll.
We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story is a strange animated parallel universe sort of affair, as if Steven Spielberg’s career slipped and hit its head in the Pagemaster library and woke up in a poorly-drawn world of clichés and celebrity voice cameos. At a curiously short 70 minutes, it tries to cram a lot of ideas in, and occasionally manages to break the surface of one or two of them. It takes the basic plot of a 20-page children’s book about dinosaurs navigating New York City, and adds child protagonists, a maniacal villain, and a benevolent old sage in an attempt to elevate it to some kind of morality tale. It is not entirely unsuccessful in this aim, and daringly ventures into territory that is dark for a movie of its caliber, opening the young audience’s eyes to a number of terrifying truths about the world.
The movie opens with a framing device that involves a large orange T-rex enjoying a day on a golf course, where he counsels an Italian-American runaway bluebird on why love is important or something. To emphasize his point, the dinosaur Rex flashes back to his own origin story, in which he is a Land Before Time-style raging predator, before he is captured by a kindly old scientist in a space blimp, who force-feeds him a mind-controlling breakfast cereal that makes him cute, bulgy-eyed and voiced by John Goodman. Yes, really.
The Dinosaurs Come to New York City
Rex and a few other talking dinosaurs—who are notably the same kinds of dinosaurs as the fabulous five of the Land Before Time movies—are sent to earth by the scientist to make kids happy. “There are lots of kids in this time wishing for you!” Captain Neweyes tells the dinos, showing them on his Wish Radio all the bright-eyed youngins whose lives are apparently so carefree and whimsical that their deepest desire is to see real-life dinosaurs. One child, though, longs for a friend, which makes him the perfect down-and-out kid for a redemption arc with a prehistoric twist. The dinos are let loose in New York City, where they happen upon that same child, a scrappy little runaway named Louie (voiced by Joey Shea), who tags along on their sluggish adventure.
As a result of an overly-long slapstick chase through the city, Louie literally lands in the swanky but noticeably quiet apartment of rich girl Cecilia (voiced by Simpsons great Yeardley Smith). Despite being from opposite sides of the track, the kids are united in their loneliness, Louie having run away from home and Cecilia having absent parents. So they go off together, apparently setting out to prove to kids everywhere once and for all that the circus is the worst place to run away to. As they wander to their imminent dooms, the dinos are busy disguising themselves as parade floats to avoid detection. Well, briefly. When it becomes apparent to Rex that the children in the crowds share in that famous widespread wish for real dinosaurs, he breaks into song.
Now don’t be fooled: We’re Back! is not a musical. This track, titled "Roll Back The Rock," is the only instance of singing in the entire movie, which makes its inclusion a pretty out-there choice. But of course, dinosaurs singing and dancing in the Macy’s parade is prime material for selling a light-hearted kids’ movie in the trailer, and they were going to need it to cushion the blow of the horrors it alluded to.
You see, kindly old Captain Neweyes warns the dinos to avoid his crazy brother Professor Screweyes, who runs a circus of horrors in Central Park. Unfortunately, this warning never reaches Louie and Cecilia, and the circus they run away to just so happens to be that of the evil genius. Now, he doesn’t exactly lurk in the shadows and snatch the kids away. He doesn’t even want to be bothered by two dumb kids, and when Cecilia tries to talk Louie out of this whole venture, Professor Screweyes implores him to listen to her. It is Louie’s stubbornness that wears the old man down enough to concede that he could find a use for two stagehands or whatever, so he whips out a blank employment contract.
Things Get Really Dark
The professor pricks Louie’s finger with a fountain pen, and gets the kid to sign the blank paper with his own blood, at which point the terms of the contract materialize. It’s actually quite a brilliant lesson told effectively. It’s like a kid-friendly version of the South Park episode "HumancentiPad," which warns viewers in no uncertain terms of the dangers of committing to the unknown or misunderstood. The movie doubles down on this with a hint of peer pressure, when Cecilia relents and signs herself over too, seemingly to ensure her friend isn’t left alone in an obviously sinister situation. She could run away, and the Professor would probably not give a damn, but this lonely little girl with parents who don’t care about her is swayed by a young and questionable friendship. It is a manifestation of the age-old parental anxiety about children getting into trouble because they get involved with “a bad crowd."
While the kids mope around, coming to terms with the fact that they have been trafficked, the dinosaurs go looking for them, and manage to track them down to the circus. They try to take the kids away with them, but the Professor waves the contract in their faces and declares the kids his property. Now given that the dinos are too gosh-darn sweet to just eat the Professor or lawyer up, their own kindness is preyed upon. As a circus of horrors proprietor, Screweyes sees much more value in real dinosaurs than a couple of runaway kids, so offers to free the kids if the dinos take their place. Not only that, but he has his own evil version of his brother’s radio, a Fright Radio, that detects people’s worst fears, and what do you know? Real monsters are nightmare fuel, and therefore great business for the Professor. With the help of his own mind-bending drug called Brain Drain, he proposes that he essentially lobotomize the dinosaurs back to their natural savage states, and use them as his most frightening act. With extra-sad faces, the syrupy reptiles accept their fates, as the kids look on with horrified expressions worthy of Lee Remick.
Good Versus Evil
You’ll notice a duality playing off the old good-twin-bad-twin trope with the two scientist brothers. One is the embodiment of all that is good and pure, and endearingly voiced by Walter Cronkite, while the other is the embodiment of a Rob Zombie movie for kids. The entire movie thinks in these binary terms, which is an interesting if not entirely coherent addition to the source material, a children’s short story by Hudson Talbott, which simply chronicles the dinosaurs’ journey through New York to the safety of a museum curator. The oppositional brothers, both of whom seek to spread a particular emotion to the masses by changing minds, is a loose meditation on good and evil, and how sentience is effectively the difference between the two. Neweyes rescues the dinosaurs from their native savagery like a missionary, before Screweyes robs them of their newly-learned civilization in order to appeal to humanity’s baser desires. The Professor even hypnotizes the kids with his evil eye and transforms them into monkeys, really hammering home the ideas of mental and evolutionary recession.
One thing this dark narrative can be given credit for is real stakes and character growth. Louie comes to the startling realization that it is his misadventure that has led to the dinosaurs making the ultimate sacrifice for him, and he does not shy away from this responsibility. In fact, he risks his life to make it right again. Horrified by the difference between Rex as voiced by John Goodman and Rex as nature intended, he runs out onto the stage where the dinosaurs roar and stamp and terrify the audiences so much that their hair sticks up on end, and appeals to Rex’s inner goodness. From the wings, a petrified Cecilia cries out to any higher power that will listen to “let no bad happen." Louie weeps and begs the raging lizard to remember who he is deep down inside, and sure enough, the obligatory single tear forms in Rex’s eye, and his sharp features begin to soften as the evil influence seeps out of him.
Just then, Captain Neweyes crashes the show in his space blimp, to confront his evil brother and congratulate the youngsters on a job well done. He says that between Cecilia’s pleas which were picked up on his Wish Radio, and Louie’s selfless act of bravery, the wrongs have been righted, and good has triumphed once more. He bundles the kids and dinosaurs into the space blimp and is such a nice guy that he offers his wicked brother a chance at redemption, but being that Screweyes is a cartoon villain, his obligatory response is “Never!” As the blimp takes off, the circus tent falls into darkness, and a murder of crows surrounds the old crook. He takes the form of a scarecrow for a brief moment, before disappearing completely, his screw-eye the only remaining trace of him. It’s a creepy, shadowy, Poe-esque ending to his character, that suggests an empty pointlessness to evil, that when people turn their backs on it, it collapses in on itself. It goes one layer deeper than the old “love conquers all” trope that almost every kids’ movie ends on, contending that there is always room for enlightenment, and that confronting evil is the only way to make positive change in the world.
Far From Perfect, But Not Without Its Strengths
The movie is far from perfect in most ways. The animation—although obviously a painstaking labor for those who produced it—is way below the standard one would expect of a theatrical release of its time. The pacing is a bit all over the place, especially for a movie so short, and it maintains a cutesy simplicity that can be summed up by pretty much any frame featuring Rex and his incessantly wondrous facial expressions. It wasn’t brilliantly received in its time, and it certainly doesn’t stand out retrospectively as particularly compelling or innovative.
But it is pretty well performed by its voice actors, particularly young Joey Shea as Louie, who brings a lot of authentic attitude and charisma to his role. And it dares to tackle some emotionally mature topics that kids’ movies generally shy away from. Blood pacts, human and animal trafficking, forcible mind alteration—it could be the stuff of horror movies. In fact, between its sinister visuals laden with skulls, crows and shadows, and even more sinister implications on the physical and mental safety of innocents, it delivers a horror-morality tale in a way that is digestible for children. It could very well even serve as a youngster’s introduction to the horror genre in ways more sophisticated than creepy creatures and haunted houses.
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