Before we get to the “review” part of this review we have to address the elephant in the room: “Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie” is a film made for young children, and any adult who says it’s not “good” will inevitably be accused of missing the point. To some, the question isn’t whether an adult critic likes it. The question is, “Who cares what an adult thinks about a movie made for kids in the first place?”
It sounds like a real gotcha, but it misses the point. “Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie” was made for children and yet, like almost all the art we show our kids, it was made by adults. If you disregard criticism about kids movies you’re not saying it doesn’t matter what adults think, you’re saying it only matters what some adults think, and the adults who make billions of dollars selling toys to your children should be allowed to influence your kids as much as they want — and never, ever be scrutinized or (god forbid) face a little criticism once in a while.
So while a film like “Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie” wasn’t made for refined artistic sensibilities, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Films for little kids teach lessons about life, relationships and what we value as a culture. Sometimes these lessons are respectable and sometimes they’re insidious. Either way, it behooves us to at least take stock of these messages and consider what they have to say.
The most obvious takeaways from “The Dino Movie” are that puppies are cute, dinosaurs are fun and we should never stop trying our best. But subliminally, the latest “Paw Patrol” is also built on more specific ideologies. If you accept this film at face value, you must also accept its primary theses, i.e. civil services should all be privatized, the wealthy are inherently altruistic, prisoner reform is impossible and only good people can change for the better.
Yes, there may be things to like about “Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie” but it’s hard to shake the idea that we’re watching the type of kids movie Omni Consumer Products would produce for the dystopian TV channels in Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop.”
“Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie” tells the story of Ryder (Henry Bolan), an independently wealthy child with zero parental supervision. He trains puppies to perform dangerous search and rescue operations using high-tech equipment. There don’t seem to be older dogs in Ryder’s employ, at least as far as the movie is concerned, which suggests either Ryder is extremely generous with his early retirement packages or, more likely — since nobody ever mentions that any of the puppies are being paid — that there’s a high mortality rate for naive young dogs who leap into raging infernos and climb exploding volcanos.
At the beginning of “The Dino Movie,” Ryder and his team save a family from a maritime disaster, and then their boat runs aground on an uncharted isle. The Paw Patrol goes exploring, so Ryder provides brand-new — and presumably consumer-friendly — gear to his Dalmatian firefighter Marshall (Carter Young), his German Shepherd police officer Chase (Rain Janjua), his Cockapoo aviator Skye (Mckenna Grace), his English Bulldog construction worker Rubble (Lucien Duncan-Reid), his mixed-breed recycling expert Rocky (William Desrosiers) and his Labrador aquatic rescue expert Zuma (Nylan Parthipan).
They quickly discover they’re on an island full of dinosaurs, but not the scary kind. There are Tyrannosaurus Rexes but — as Rubble says at the end of the movie — all of the dinosaurs seem to be herbivores, even the ones with sharp, pointy teeth. They also don’t have any feathers, so if you think this kids movie might be educational in some way, think again. We’re here to have fun with dinosaurs, not to have fun learning about them.
The Paw Patrol also finds another dog on the island. Rex is a disabled Bernese Mountain Dog with a wheeled dog walker. He’s voiced by Hayden Chamberlain, and he spent several years making the island accessible and developing a healthy equilibrium with the local flora and fauna.
Say what you will about the rest of “Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie,” but the filmmakers wrote a heroic disabled character into their story and cast an actual wheelchair user in the role. They never shy away from Rex’s disability and it’s not the character’s only defining trait. If we’re going to criticize this movie for its questionable messaging, we also have to acknowledge there are a lot of prominent, award-winning films about disability that don’t handle their representation as well as “Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie.” You have to give credit where credit is due.
Alas, you can’t have a “Paw Patrol” movie without their archenemy Humdinger (Ron Pardo). He gets out of prison at the beginning of the film, determined to never make the same mistakes again. Nobody believes him, and they were right to be cynical because he returns to a life of crime as soon as he finds out the dinosaur island is full of diamonds. Criminals are just inherently bad people, apparently. So are the cats in this universe. They’re portrayed as inherently untrustworthy and/or incompetent. Even the otherwise heroic Paw Patrol resorts to casual bigotry whenever felines are involved, and their suspicions are always proven accurate, because that’s how things work here.
“Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie” is a colorful enterprise, full of friendly imagery and somewhat engaging set pieces. (There’s a particularly nifty action sequence involving a ravine filled with lava, a rope tied between two rescue vehicles and two helpless scientists trapped in the middle.) And while the characterizations are thin, the dialogue is eye-rolling and the plot is simplistic, that’s where “it’s for kids” can be treated as an acceptable excuse. Movies for young kids aren’t only teaching them about the world, they’re also teaching kids how to watch movies. The rudimentary storytelling in “The Dino Movie” can be viewed as a primer for understanding how other, more challenging movies will work in the future. After all, the alphabet may be child’s play, but you can’t read James Joyce’s “Ulysses” without it.
The questionable ideologies of “Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie” may concern some parents. Others may find the film’s iffier themes completely acceptable. Either way, it’s worth keeping in mind that this is what’s loose in the atmosphere of our popular culture, and it’s probably worth remembering that most kids won’t care about any of that. At least, not until they become discerning adults and look back on “Paw Patrol” with the same critical eye we now reserve for the rah-rah militarism of “G.I. Joe” or the annoying naïveté of the “Care Bears.” But even then they’ll be able to say “The Dino Movie” was bright and spirited, and the filmmakers cared enough about kids with disabilities to treat them with respect and represent them in a responsible manner — while, admittedly, also trying to sell toys.
