We're Back!

One thing the title of this post means is that I'm back from Colorado. It was a good, albeit fast, trip. My wife and I ate at many of our favorite restaurants exclusive to the area, saw UP for the third time, and took a zillion pictures of butterflies at the Butterfly Pavilion. But now, as with last week, I'm back in the real world and expected to do things--and I have plenty of things to do.

The other thing alludes to my recent re-watching of We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. I'm a sucker for animation and even more so to ones that I watched as a child. Sometimes these flicks hold up, other times they don't. And now I understand why it took them so long to put this film out on DVD. What a lump of dino-crap.

The animation itself was actually quite good and beautiful for its time, but the story was simply awful. Granted, I think we, as general viewers, have been spoiled by the recent quality upgrade of animated films. Between Pixar, Blue Sky, and DreamWorks--not to mention Laika's addition with Coraline--animated films have gone above and beyond what they used to be. Granted, we still get our share of crap--Delgo or Battle for Terra, anyone?--but I feel like the addtion of more quality studios have raised the overall bar of animation. And really, I'd probably forgive We're Back a bit more if it hadn't been so utterly bizarre. About midway through the film, it takes quite a tonal shift and just turns plain weird. It's no wonder my mother hadn't liked this one when I was a kid. I wouldn't be surprised if the problems for this one arose from the fact that it has four different directors, but still. Tonal consistency makes for a coherent movie. Watch this one if you must, or if you have sentimental rememberances, but I would stay far away if you haven't seen it before.