STARRING THE VOICES OF D.B. SWEENEY, JULIANNA MARGULIES, ALFRE WOODARD, DELLA REESE, JOAN PLOWRIGHT, OSSIE DAVIS, SAMUEL E. WRIGHT DIRECTED BY RALPH ZONDAG AND ERIC LEIGHTON
BUZZ-O-METER 6
WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Huge creatures! Huge budget! Huge layoffs if this doesn't click!
Forget Disney's usual mid-June 'toon release. This time it's moved to May 19, eschewed hand-drawn characters for computer-generated beasties against live-action backgrounds, dropped the songs, and — gasp! — kicked up the intensity to PG territory. ''Just to look at our villain, the carnotaur,'' boasts co-director Zondag, ''is to look at pure evil.'' True to Disney animated form, however, Dinosaur is an otherwise cuddly coming-of-age tale — about an orphaned iguanodon (voiced by Sweeney). It also chomped through five and a half years of production effort and sacks of money; the directors estimate $80 million went just to build Disney's new digital-production studio. On top of that, reports have pegged the film's budget at about $140 million. ''Friends outside Disney have thrown around numbers [for the movie and the new facility] as high as $350 million,'' says Leighton. ''We just don't see that. What we have spent, you'll see every penny.'' As for Reese (TV's Touched by an Angel), she sees the film as a gift ''for the grandkids and godchildren.'' She just hopes the animators ''didn't look at me and see Eema, my character.'' Why? ''Eema weighs 900 pounds, has a fat belly, and walks low to the ground.'' (May 19)
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