We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story is a 1993 American animated film based on the 1987 Hudson Talbott children's book of the same name and released to theaters on November 24, 1993. It depicts four intelligent anthropomorphized dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops Woog, Pteranodon Elsa, and Parasaurolophus Dweeb, in their journey to the Museum of Natural History. The prehistoric beings have gone to the present time and become intelligent through eating a "Brain Grain" cereal invented by scientist Captain Neweyes, who wants dinosaurs to be personally seen by children. They face two major conflicts: an attempt to not be noticed by the public, and to not be exploited by Neweyes' evil brother Professor Screweyes, who wants to use the dinosaurs for his circus business. The dinosaurs are helped along by two runaway children, Louie and Cecilia.
Produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio and distributed by Universal Pictures, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story was directed by Dick Zondag, Ralph Zondag, Phil Nibbelink, and Simon Wells from a screenplay by John Patrick Shanley. Universal bought the rights to the novel only months after its publication, and Amblimation began storyboarding the adaptation in 1990 during the production of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). The film features the voices of John Goodman, Rene LeVant, Felicity Kendal, Charles Fleischer, Walter Cronkite, Jay Leno, Joey Shea, Julia Child, Kenneth Mars, Yeardley Smith, Martin Short, Blaze Berdahl, and Rhea Perlman.
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story was released during a surge of the dinosaur in pop culture, known as the dinosaur renaissance; it was released the same year as another Spielberg dinosaur flick, Jurassic Park, and was marketed as the more family-friendly equivalent. Despite the dinosaur mania, it did not perform well at the box office, grossing $9.3 million. It received mixed reviews from critics; while its voice cast and animation were praised, most criticisms targeted the writing, particularly its convoluted-ness, pacing, unoriginality, and lack of character development.
