By Teri Bayus

Be warned this is going to be a rant, a negative rant. I have never before been so angry at a motion picture. I have been scared, saddened, thrilled, tickled, terrified and horrified, but never spitting mad at a movie and the studio that made it.
The object of my disgust? “The Good Dinosaur,” produced by Pixar. These are the same folks that gave us “Up,” “Toy Story,” “Wall-E” and many other wonderful family pictures that melted our hearts, taught lessons and were safely viewed by anyone in the family.
I do admit that the death storyline that pops up often is a bit off-putting, but death is a real part of life.
Before, it was handled gently for the young and sensitive viewers. Not so with the currant piece of crappy celluloid, The Good Dinosaur.
I have been taking my grandkids to the movies since they were babies. I usually research the film first to make sure it is appropriate for their viewing. I never checked on a Pixar movie, especially an animated one about a dinosaur. I trusted them. I was very wrong.
This movie was so offensive that I swear it was done intentionally. It started with the short.
Those cute and sometimes better, 5-minute movies that start each film. They usually are brilliant and funny. This one is called “Sanjay’s Super Team,” directed by Sanjay Patel.
It follows the daydream of a young Indian boy, bored with his father’s religious meditation, who imagines Hindu gods as superheroes. This seems like a nice metaphor, but it was frightening.
Three-headed monsters battle Gods and a barrage of scary fight scenes and images.  My 5-year-old grandson asked to leave 2 minutes into it. I was sure it would get better or at least funny, but it didn’t and failed to inspire or even enlighten.
His other grandparents were with us, and sandwiched between him, we shared furtive glances. This film commits the cardinal sin of failure with both of its primary audiences — parents and children.
It features a dinosaur named, Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa), and his pet human, Spot (Jack Bright). The pair, separated from their families, travel together on the familiar adventure to find their way home. But this one is riddled with frightening images.
We all found it too scary due to intense, graphic scenes. The film moves from one scary scene to the next. From a horrible storm and a badly injured, limping Arlo, to Arlo’s father being drowned in the river. Then Arlo in another storm, falling down a hill and passing out in the water, to him falling off a cliff, then running out of food, and being attacked and hunted.
There’s a hallucination scene, conversations about wanting the crocodile drowned in a pool of his own blood. Those with a fear of thunder and lightning may end up wailing through the movie.
Even the family is horrendous. Arlo’s father seems to be more interested in Arlo murdering a child, his sibling’s evil bullies. Every other character they meet seems to be either racist (some deep South accented dinosaurs portrayed as dumb hicks) or the T- Rexes that gallop along rounding up bison with accents straight out of John Wayne movies.
It is completely relentless in its desire to move from one to another cliffhanger.
At the end of the movie, Arlo finds his way home and inexplicably pushes the human boy onto a random human family that, moments before, rejected. He makes his way home and is allowed to leave his footprint on a wall, which he wasn’t allowed to do earlier because his family viewed him as a giant clumsy wimp who wouldn’t kill a human.
I do not trust Pixar any more. I cannot find one good reason this story — an animated dinosaur movie — would have scarier elements than Jurassic Park (which the grandkids saw and were not afraid). It seems their newest foray into the emotional spectrum is to terrify children without a good story behind it. Shame on you Pixar.

Teri Bayus can be scene on her culinary television show, “Taste Buds” at: www.centralcoastnow.tv or on Charter Cable Ch. 10. Her novel “Consumed, An Erotic Culinary Tale,” is available on Amazon and iTunes. Dinner and a Movie is a regular feature of Tolosa Press.