We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story is a 1993 animated adventure comedy film directed by Dick Zondag, Ralph Zondag, Phil Nibbelink, and Simon Wells from a screenplay by John Patrick Shanley. Loosely based on the 1987 Hudson Talbott children's book of the same name, it tells the story of three dinosaurs and one pterosaur who travel to the present day and become intelligent by eating a "Brain Grain" cereal invented by scientist Captain Neweyes. The film was produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblimation studio and features the voices of John Goodman, Felicity Kendal, Charles Fleischer, Walter Cronkite, Jay Leno, Julia Child, Kenneth Mars, Yeardley Smith, and Martin Short.
It was released by Universal Pictures on November 24, 1993; it was marketed as the more family-friendly equivalent of Spielberg's Jurassic Park, which was released in June of the same year. The film was a box-office bomb, grossing $9.3 million worldwide, and received mixed reviews from critics: while its animation, score, and voice performances were praised, most criticisms targeted its story, pacing, and lack of character development.
Plot In New York City, a young bluebird named Buster runs away from his siblings and meets an intelligent orange Tyrannosaurus named Rex, who is playing golf. He explains to Buster that he was once a ravaging dinosaur and proceeds to tell his personal story.
In the Cretaceous Period, Rex is chasing a small Thescelosaurus, only to be taken aboard a flying time-traveling ship owned by Captain Neweyes, who wants children of the present day to see real dinosaurs from the Mesozoic era. He and his alien assistant Vorb have come to collect four dinosaurs – Rex, a blue Triceratops named Woog, a purple Pterodactyl named Elsa, and a green Parasaurolophus named Dweeb – and give them the cereal 'Brain Grain' to bestow them sentience. Neweyes welcomes them aboard his ship, explains his plan to take them to Dr. Julia Bleeb, who will guide them to the Museum of Natural History, and warns them to avoid Professor Screweyes, his unhinged twin brother who causes mischief after having lost his left eye to a crow in his youth.
Neweyes drops the dinosaurs in the East River in the year 1993, but they are unable to meet up with Dr. Bleeb. They encounter two runaway children willing to help them find the museum – a boy named Louie, who ran away from home in order to join the circus, and a girl named Cecilia, who is neglected by her wealthy parents. To avoid being noticed as real dinosaurs, they pose as animatronics in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Their cover is blown, however, when Rex accidentally deflates an Apatosaurus balloon after performing a musical number during the parade. The children at the parade are ecstatic upon realizing that the dinosaurs are real and show no fear towards them. However, the adult citizens panic and run, forcing the dinosaurs to flee to Central Park while being pursued by the police and the army.
Meanwhile, Louie and Cecilia meet Professor Screweyes, who is running the horror-themed "Eccentric Circus". Unaware of his dark nature, the children sign a contract to perform in his troupe. When the dinosaurs arrive to save them, Screweyes devolves the children into mindless chimpanzees using "Brain Drain", pills that are the polar opposite of the Brain Grain cereal. The dinosaurs are forced to consume the pills, which cause them to lose their intelligence and revert to their natural forms, in exchange for Screweyes restoring Louie and Cecilia back into humans and releasing them. The next morning, a friendly clown named Stubbs, who works for Professor Screweyes, informs the two kids about Screweyes' plan to exploit the dinosaurs for their scare potential.
That night, Stubbs helps Louie and Cecilia sneak into the circus, where the dinosaurs perform their terrifying act – Screweyes hypnotizing Rex – before the trick is ruined by a crow turning on flares. Rex grabs and prepares to eat Screweyes, but Louie steps in and talks the Tyrannosaurus out of his vengeance. His and Cecilia's impassioned pleas and loving touch restore the dinosaurs' sentience; Cecilia then admits her love for Louie - who is at first reluctant - and kisses him on the lips. Stubbs resigns from Professor Screweyes' employment and Captain Neweyes arrives in his ship to lift the kids and the dinosaurs out of the circus, leaving an unrepentant Screweyes to be devoured by crows. The dinosaurs arrive at the museum and meet Dr. Bleeb, then are secretly revealed to a crowd of children the next day, fulfilling Neweyes' plan, while Louie and Cecilia reunite and reconcile with their respective parents and become a couple.
Back in the present day, Buster returns to his family, ignoring his siblings' taunts after retaliating against them with a simple gesture while hugging his mother, and Rex bids him good night and asks him to remember his story as he leaves to rejoin his friends at the museum.
Voice cast John Goodman as Rex, a kind Tyrannosaurus. René Le Vant as Woog, a gluttonous Triceratops. Felicity Kendal as Elsa, an elegant Pterodactyl. Charles Fleischer as Dweeb, a half-witted Parasaurolophus (an Apatosaurus in the original storyboard and storyline). Walter Cronkite as Captain Neweyes, an inventor who brings the dinosaurs to the present. Jay Leno as Vorb, an alien that works for Captain. Neweyes. Joey Shea as Louie, a brave 12-year-old boy from a lower-class background who runs away from his overbearing family to join a circus. Julia Child as Dr. Juliet Bleeb, a worker at the Museum of Natural History. Kenneth Mars as Professor Screweyes, Captain. Neweyes' evil sorcerer twin brother who runs a circus. Yeardley Smith as Cecilia Nuthatch, a 12-year-old girl from a wealthy family whose workaholic father and socialite mother often leave her alone. Martin Short as Stubbs the Clown, a clown who reluctantly works for Professor Screweyes. Blaze Berdahl as Buster the Bird, a young bluebird who is running away from home and is told the film's plot by Rex. Rhea Perlman as Buster's Mother
Production
Development Hanna-Barbera was the first company to contact Hudson Talbott about obtaining rights to his 1987 book We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, and the encounter occurred only months after its release; Universal Pictures then paid off Hanna-Barbera and purchased the rights for Steven Spielberg to produce the film through his London-based animation studio, Amblimation. John Musker and Ron Clements were also interested in adapting the book for Walt Disney Feature Animation, as a potential project after The Little Mermaid (1989), but were informed that Universal and Spielberg had already purchased the rights. Musker envisioned their version "like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but a 7-year-old Snow White and with dinosaurs instead of the dwarfs."
Although Talbott had little involvement, he encountered the creators of the film many times during production, including Spielberg who would make several calls to the author from Los Angeles and had a personal meeting with him when he first arrived in London. We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story was directed by Simon Wells, Phil Nibbelink, and the brothers Dick and Ralph Zondag, though Nibbelink was the most involved with the project out of the four directors, while Wells only co-directed during the writing process before he was assigned to direct Balto (1995) shortly after. All of the directors frequently rotated in and out between projects in Amblimation, with We're Back!, Balto and development on a failed animated adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats happening at the same time.
Nibbelink and Wells began storyboarding We're Back! in 1990, during the production of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). The Zondag brothers joined the project a year later, and redid some sequences from scratch, but their alterations were overall minimal. The source material was only 20 pages and lacked any antagonist or sense of a plot, making it difficult to convert to a full-length feature. The first screenplay draft, which was described by executive Douglas Wood as more lighthearted, was written by Flint Dille and Wells, and was not well received by Spielberg. John Patrick Shanley, writer of Moonstruck (1987), had worked with Spielberg on Joe Versus the Volcano (1990). Spielberg hired Shanley to write another draft, which was done quickly and was the script ultimately used. Shanley made his draft darker, which both Wood and Spielberg liked, but Nibbelink disagreed with. Talbott was often skeptical about how the book was being adapted, so Nibbelink instructed the author to have a positive mindset. Talbott felt Shanley's script had none of the book's tongue-in-cheek humor. Likewise, the voice actors and Nibbelink found Shanley's dialogue a bit unnatural, so they changed a few lines while recording; this was not approved by Shanley, however, so recordings of his original dialogue were used in the finished film. Nonetheless, Shanley continued to rewrite and change the script at Spielberg's behest, even through post-production.
Animation To ensure scientific accuracy in the dinosaurs' designs, the filmmakers visited the Natural History Museum in London several times to study the dinosaur displays; nonetheless, the animators frequently relied on their own creative instincts. Nibbelink was particularly pleased with the work done by the effects animators, especially on Captain Neweyes' flying ship. We're Back! was also the first animated film not produced by Disney to fully use digital ink-and-paint technology to complete the animation, which was done by the San Diego-based film colorization company American Film Technologies. Additional animation was provided by Character Builders in Columbus, Ohio.
Casting Various crew members offered very different accounts of the film's casting process. Nibbelink claimed to have voiced the characters in animatics, which involved successful imitations of notable figures like Walter Cronkite and Julia Child; Spielberg, enjoying Nibbelink's voicing, cast the people that were impersonated in the animatics. According to Shanley, Spielberg cast Child and Cronkite in direct response to his comments that the characters should sound like them. Wood stated that he and the developmental group made the casting choices during meetings, when they received the script. John Goodman started recording the role of Rex just after having his wisdom teeth removed, and healed his face between takes. We're Back! was not Wells' first encounter with Felicity Kendal, who voiced Elsa, as he previously asked to work with her on a student project that she declined. Nibbelink and Wells recorded with Cronkite on a Saturday morning in New York City, but when they arrived for his recording session, he was unable to get into the building due to the doors being locked, and Nibbelink had to apologize to him before the session could begin. Prior to Cronkite's casting as Captain Neweyes, Shanley suggested Mickey Rooney for the role, but was overruled, because Rooney was deemed "too difficult." Wood was most impressed with Martin Short, who showed full commitment to his role as Stubbs the Clown.