I agree with you. Considering Dinosaur as one of the worst Disneyan movies is a bit unfair in my opinion, it basically was an experimental tentative, not only for being the first fully Disneyan CGI but also for recreating for the first time a realistic Mesozoic world in a non-documentary work; in my opinion it was inevitable that the story and the characters would be fallen in the average field, since wildlife realism and amazing plots cannot stay well together. Unfortunately, Executive Meddling has partially ruined the realism with exagerrated anthropomorfism of certain main characters (i.e. the fleshy lips of the Iguanodons) and playing stright Predators Are Mean of Carnivore Confusion with the Carnotaurs, other that Anachronism Stew of course. A pity, it had the possibility to be a great film because of the absolute novelty that it was going to represent. But still an interesting work, it is worth to be seen at least once.
P.S. Forget my bad english, I come from Italy
Incredibly forgettable? I'm willing to bet Naughty Dog would say otherwise. Seriously, I'm actually willing to bet that Zini was the inspiration for Daxter, which is why Max Casella voices him.
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Experimental Film
Dinosaur is a film with an interesting place in Disney's history. It was Disney's first attempt at a CGI film since Pixar came on the scene with Toy Story. Not only that, it was an blend of live-action scenery and CGI characters, like Walking with Dinosaurs. So, does this animated experiment really work?
To put it simply, Dinosaur is not a spectacularly good film. It is largely average, brought down mainly by the characters. They are simply blandly written. Aladar is basically like every other generic film hero, aside from the whole dinosaur thing; the lemurs are incredibly forgettable, being dwarfed by the dinosaurs; and everyone else is generally one-note and just sort of exists to do things when needed to (although Baylene's response to Aladar's Heroic BSOD moment was a tentative glimpse of what might have been). I do find it interesting, though, that the villain, Kron, is motivated in his leadership of the herd by a sense of social Darwinism. While this was likely used to invoke the nature of prehistoric times, it seems to be kind of heavy stuff for the demographic this film was aimed at.
The plot, similarly, is generic, bare-bones heroes journey stuff. It just sort of happens without being overly engaging, so you get to the end of the film and realise that somehow an hour or so has gone by without much happening within it. There's also the whole Land Before Time ripoff thing levelled at the film, but I haven't seen that in ages, so I won't comment.
So what saves the film from being totally average? Its aesthetics, that's what. The CGI is extremely pretty, even if the uncanny valley rears its head sometimes due to the cartoonish look of some characters clashing badly with the other photorealistic dinosaurs. The blend of animation and live-action also works very well without resorting to puppetry to show closeups. Finally, the score is absolutely wonderful, and I highly recommend you check it out. Tribal music seems to be the default for dinosaurs nowadays, but it just works so well here that I have no problems with it.
Dinosaur is a film that works more as a curiosity than an actual film. Representing Disney's first foray into CGI films, it doesn't capture the same magic as Pixar's films do, thanks to bland writing, but its incredible aesthetics saves it from total extinction.