The third Paw Patrol feature brings back the team behind the first two, with Cal Brunker directing and co-writing alongside Bob Barlen. This time they pull from the show’s Dino Rescue episodes and drop the pups somewhere Adventure Bay has never been. I went in expecting a toy commercial with a runtime. I came out having had a pretty good time.
Washed Up on Dino Island
The movie opens on a rescue at sea, with Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton voicing Dave and Nancy, a couple whose boat catches fire. The pups get them out, a storm rolls in, and Ryder and the team wash ashore on an uncharted island where dinosaurs never died out. Every one of them is friendly, the T. rex included, which keeps the movie safe for the preschool crowd that fills these screenings.
Their guide is Rex, a Bernese mountain pup who has been stranded on the island for years, rolls around on a wheelchair harness, and knows how to talk to the dinosaurs. Marshall, meanwhile, adopts a baby dino he names Rhubarb, and the two of them steal most of the scenes they share.
The trouble starts when Mayor Humdinger, freshly out of jail, catches the news coverage of Dino Island and learns it sits on a massive diamond deposit. He hires a survivalist guide and a demolitions expert, starts setting off dynamite, and ignores Marshall when he warns that all that blasting could wake up the island’s volcano. You can guess where that goes. The final act is a lava-soaked rescue where the pups and the dinosaurs work together to get people and smaller dinos to safety.
The Cast Is Better Than It Has Any Right to Be
Kids’ movies stack celebrity voices all the time, and most of them disappear into the background. Here the casting choices land.
Terry Crews plays Alistair Stonewall, the demolitions guy, and his booming delivery suits a character whose answer to every problem is a bigger explosion. Meredith MacNeill, from Baroness von Sketch Show, voices Harper Cutlass, the survivalist who rigs the island with traps for the dinosaurs. The two of them make a good comedy pairing with Humdinger, and the closing gag, where all three are stuck shoveling dinosaur poop for fertilizer while Stonewall refuses to forgive Humdinger, got the biggest laugh from the adults in my theater.
Ron Pardo is still the franchise MVP. He voices Humdinger and Cap’n Turbot, and he has been doing it long enough that the mayor’s smug whine is basically a Paw Patrol sound effect at this point.
The scientists who descend on the island bring the parent-level jokes. Bill Nye plays Dr. Theo Rising, which is the most on-the-nose casting of the year in the best way. Jameela Jamil and Fortune Feimster voice Heidi Pothesis and Eugenia Bunsen, names built for parents to catch while the kids watch the dinosaurs. Jennifer Hudson rounds out the group as Lilian Ledes.
On the pup side, Mckenna Grace returns as Skye after The Mighty Movie, and newcomer Henry Bolan takes over as Ryder without missing a beat. The two performances carrying the movie, though, come from Carter Young as Marshall and Hayden Chemberlen as Rex.
Marshall and Rex Give It Heart
Marshall has always been the clumsy one, and the movie turns that into his story. Accidents keep piling up around him, he keeps getting back up, and by the end the dalmatian who can’t stop tripping is the one who saves the day with Rhubarb by releasing a flood of water to hold back the lava. The message is simple, that nobody is perfect and you keep trying anyway, and Young sells it.
Rex might be the best new addition the franchise has made. His wheelchair is part of who he is, and the movie never stops the story to deliver a speech about it. He is the expert in the room, the pups follow his lead, and kids watching get a hero who uses a wheelchair without the film making a big deal of it.
Who It’s For
This is a movie for kids around eight and under, and it knows it. It’s rated PG, and the only real intensity comes from the volcano climax. Since the dinosaurs are all on the pups’ side, it’s a much easier first dinosaur movie than anything with Jurassic in the title.
Parents get more than usual out of it, though. The animation on Dino Island is bright and detailed, the pacing moves, and between Terry Crews blowing things up and Bill Nye playing a scientist named Theo Rising, there’s enough here to keep grown-ups awake.
Verdict
Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie is the best of the three films. If you have a little Paw Patrol fan at home, take them, and stay for the dino poop gag at the end.
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