The holiday movie leaving scores of kids in tears

MY kids and I often head to the movies in the holidays and the last couple of movies have seen us all leave the cinemas laughing and discussing the movie and its issues in great depth.

Home had us throwing our hands in the air like we just did not care, Minions had us speaking hilarious gibberish for weeks and Inside Out gave us all of the feels and plenty of gold happy memory balls.

I assumed our trip to The Good Dinosaur would end similarly. My god was I wrong.

“I never want to see that again,” exclaimed my six-year-old.

“That was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen,” my seven-year-old said.

Even I turned to my friend who brought along her kids and said: “I was not prepared for those emotions. Disney has some explaining to do.”

You see, I’d spent the last hour and forty minutes on an emotional rollercoaster that I was immensely unprepared for. I hadn’t felt such intense emotions from a cartoon movie since Mufusa’s death in The Lion King in 1994 and it seems I wasn’t alone.

I put a status up online after getting home offering a much-needed warning to all my friends who planned to take their kids to see it this holidays, and got similar feedback from friends who had.

“My niece was uncontrollably crying through the whole film,” one of my friends told me.

I don’t blame the poor kid, so was I.

(Spoiler Alert: Don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens.)

The movie is about Arlo, an Apatosaurus dinosaur who lives in a time where humans and dinosaurs coexist (although we don’t see that many humans, or development, or many other dinosaurs either for that matter). After a series of unfortunate and distressing events, Arlo ends up lost in the mountains with no way to find his way home.

Along the way he meets Spot, a Neanderthal child, and they become friends. Then you know it’s normal Disney stuff; journeys, friends and family and finding yourself, you’ve head it all before no doubt.

For me the turning point in the film was as the storm hit and Arlo’s dad turned to see the incoming flood waters.

My thoughts instantly turned to The Lion King. They can’t do this to me AGAIN. No Disney, it’s not allowed. Disney. No. Don’t do it. Don’t. I’m warning you.

They did it.

“Mum, is his dad dead?” whispered my six-year-old.

“Yes, honey,” I whimpered through my tears.

* Cue five-year-olds in the cinema simultaneously bursting into tears *

Disney, you suck!

I turned to my friend and said I hoped it got better from there. It didn’t.

I’m not sure what went on in the writing room at Disney HQ but apparently ‘death of parent’ wasn’t enough of a storyline. They thought why not bring in an apparently lost orphaned Neanderthal child, some scavenger vultures that want to eat the Neanderthal child, endless weird and scary forest creatures, oh and some MORE flood waters (because that’s not going to remind us of the horrible way a main character died less than half an hour ago).

In one review, it is said Arlo has “good fortune” meeting Spot the Neanderthal child.

I don’t know about you, but if I was lost in the mountains I could think of a hell of a lot of other things that would be more fortunate than bumping into the Neanderthal baby who played a major part in me getting lost in the first place and was basically the sole reason my father died.

I guess Spot does bring Arlo food and one point, so that’s a plus.

Despite the ups and downs (with the downs majorly outnumbering the ups) throughout the film, it does end on a happy(ish) note.

After some drama-filled adventures in the mountains (read: death, barely surviving in the wilderness, major storms and the pressure of saving a child’s life) Arlo eventually makes his way home. But not before finding Spot’s family and making sure he goes home with them. (Weren’t they dead? What happened there? Was that his grandparents? Siblings? Still confused by that.)

I think you’re meant to leave knowing the moral of the story is: family. This probably would have been easier to accept if the whole plot didn’t revolve around the child failing to impress his dad, the dad trying to teach him a lesson and then dying in the process.

But, you know, family. Gives us all the feels. Right?

Go Disney Pixar. Not.

If you’re happy to go see a revamp of The Lion King, mixed with The Land Before Time, by all means go ahead. Just be sure to bring the tissues.

I give this three double tear crying emoji, two feel good smiley emoji because Arlo does eventually make it home, and one screwed up “WTF” emoji face — because WTF was Disney Pixar thinking? Bring back Bing Bong!

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