Leave it to the brilliant minds at Disney Pixar to create a wonderful new movie, which not only has a fresh and new idea for a storyline, but also has the characters that you once again fall in love with. This is how I felt after seeing their latest gift, “The Good Dinosaur.”

I wasn’t sure what to expect when it started — the only ad my daughter and I recalled was one that suggested “what if the meteor had missed?”  The movie did start out with that exact concept, making it clear that this was their idea of what a world with evolving dinosaurs would look like.  And what a world it would be!  I don’t want to give away much, but right off the bat, you see that the Dinos have figured things out.

We meet a family of dinosaurs that are just like a family you’d meet today — a proud father, a loving mother and three kids with three distinct personalities.  Arlo is our hero, hatched last and smallest after his siblings.  They grow up, as siblings do, with the usual amounts of teasing and squabbling that comes along with it.  They all have their chores and have to help participate in the family routine.  Everything goes along well until tragedy strikes and Arlo is separated from his family by a good distance.  He wants to find his way back, and naturally along the way will meet all kinds of interesting characters and have crazy adventures.  A favorite is Spot, the tiny human who runs and barks like a dog, but finds his way into your heart pretty quickly as Arlo’s sidekick.  Another welcome character is Butch, a T-rex that Arlo befriends and is voiced by the wonderful Sam Elliott.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but his voice wraps me up like a warm cozy blanket, making me feel safe and comforted all at once.

As Arlo goes along in his adventure, he slowly but surely becomes more confident in himself, and does some of the growing up that he needed to do.  You find yourself cheering him on and feeling proud as he plugs along and fights his way through the inevitable bad guys.  There are also a LOT of laughs along the way — I don’t know the last time I heard an audience laugh that loud, multiple times!   Everyone around me — kids of all ages — enjoyed this movie from beginning to end.

In the end, I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to preview this movie and recommend it to others!  Please take your whole family out and see this one together.  Every age will love it and get something out of it — I guarantee it!

Merrie is a writer for the Jen is on a Journey and you can also find her at her blog, Sleepless Mornings: Merrie is the mother of two beautiful children, newly married, a scrapbooker, a baker, and always fun to be around! Media passes were given for review.