Review: The Green Dinosaur is a thrilling portrait of an artwork as a young dinosaur

Being an animated film enthusiast can be really strange sometimes. I spend a lot of time scouring the internet for news about animated movies coming out around the world, or screening at far-flung festivals. This leads me to reach out to production companies, distributors, festival organizers, or the filmmakers themselves. Sometimes I'm able to get a screener link for a movie that won't come to the US for a long time, or ever. Other times, there's silence. If there's already US distribution lined up, I'm normally shuffled down the line, and told to wait until it's coming to these shores.

Last autumn, I became aware of a movie called Diplodocus, based on the comic books by Tadeusz Baranowski, that was playing in Sitges at a genre film festival there. I ended up getting in touch with the film's director, Wojtek Wawszczyk, who was super friendly and helpful, but ultimately, because the film was on the market/lining up US distribution, I couldn't get a link at the time. So it goes.

Flash forward to today. I was on Amazon Prime looking at the rental prices of some of this year's animated releases that I still need to catch up on, and a movie catches my eye: The Green Dinosaur. Why does that look so familiar? I click on it and quickly realize...it's Diplodocus! Re-named, I think freshly released here in the US. Of course, I dove right in.

And I'm happy to report, this movie was worth the wait.

The first thing you'll notice about The Green Dinosaur is that its main character, whose name is Diplodocus, is stupidly cute. He's green, long-necked, expressive-eyed, and he has these massive, fantastic ears that give his head the shape of a four-leafed clover. It's dynamite, perfect character design: deceptively simple, elegant in that simplicity, one of the cutest characters of the year.

While he looks like a clover, Diplodocus isn't terribly lucky in his adventure. We meet him as he climbs up the wall of his family's secluded, mud-filled pit, looking out at the vast world, wishing he could be part of it. He's promptly reprimanded. The world is scary. This place is safe. Why does he want more?

But more he gets, through very unusual means.

Throughout the film, we cut to Diplodocus's creator, a comic book artist who's struggling to come up with a character that will satisfy his...let's say "intense" publisher, who wants a cutesy cat character, none of the stuff the artist has been working on. I'm generally not a big fan of when live-action scenes pop up in animated movies. When I'm watching animation, I want to watch animation. But, in this case, as in many cases, these scenes are well-executed, and they're so central to the thematic ponderings of the film that I honestly can't imagine it without them.

The artist wants to satisfy the publisher, so he starts erasing the many worlds and characters he's created, starting with Diplodocus's home. The effect is great, as the world is literally erased as Diplodocus runs for the jungle, huge swaths of the world being swiped into blankness behind him. This is the first of a few bits of mixed-media animation that the film employs, the great visual effect. I love a blend of 2-D and 3-D or computer animation and hand-drawn. It leads to so many fun gags and interesting compositions. Those moments are done wonderfully here.

my circle small but we crazy

Diplodocus discovers he has a world-hopping power, one that he gradually learns to control a bit more, which leads him to other worlds the artist has created over the years. If you thought we were done with multiverse movies, think again! I love the creativity of the worlds and characters that Diplodocus meets, including a one-trick wizard and some brilliant scientists, who all band together to try to solve the Blankness and trace it to its source. There are fun moments of push-pull between the real world and the animated world: a spilled coffee causes coffee-rain to fall from the sky. As the artist tries to cute-ify various characters, those changes are reflected in real-time in the world around Diplodocus and his new friends. I am such a sucker for a story like this -- in fact, I once wrote a rom-com that followed a very similar story structure -- so I was in heaven the whole time.

While the film works perfectly fine as a colorful, sometimes meta adventure story, it also has strong thematic structure beneath the cute ongoings. There's the tension of being a creative person, wanting to stay authentic to your own voice while also wanting to make ends meet, sometimes for corporate-ish overlords who might not really see the vision. Also the idea, the character, the world that you as a storyteller just can't shake, that takes on a life of its own, that comes back to you again and again, asking you to give it another look, another chance. We see early on that Diplodocus was a character the artist created in childhood, which makes his willingness to erase him all the more heart-rending. And the little dino all the easier to root for.

And this movie is just as easy to root for. The vibes are immaculate, the story moves along at a great clip, and it has just enough twists and turns to really surprise you. And Diplodocus is just so stinking cute! I'll never shut up about that.