We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story

An inventor named Captain Neweyes travels back in time in a flying machine and gives four dinosaurs a special cereal that makes them intelligent and gentle. He brings Rex, Woog, Dweeb and Elsa to present-day New York so they can brighten the lives of children, but a mishap scatters the dinosaurs, who meet the boy Louie and the girl Cecilia. Pursued by the captain's sinister brother, Professor Screweyes, who runs a circus and sees the dinosaurs as an attraction, the children try to keep the animals out of his hands.

The film was directed by Simon Wells, Phil Nibbelink, Ralph Zondag and Dick Zondag, arriving between Wells's and Nibbelink's shared work on An American Tail: Fievel Goes West and Wells's later Balto, The Prince of Egypt, The Time Machine and Mars Needs Moms, and before Ralph Zondag's Dinosaur. It was written by John Patrick Shanley and produced by Steve Hickner, with John Goodman, René Le Vant, Felicity Kendal, Charles Fleischer, Walter Cronkite and Jay Leno among the voice cast. The animation was produced by Amblimation with Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment.

It runs a short 71 minutes. It earned about 9 million dollars worldwide, a modest return for an animated release of its era. On IMDb it holds 6 out of 10 from some 15,800 votes, and on TMDB 6.1 out of 10 from roughly 460 votes, while critics gave it 4.1 out of 10 across 16 reviews, so audiences have been consistently kinder to it than reviewers were.