Timing is everything.

Disney's Dinosaur is a remarkable achievement five years in the making.

It plunges the audience into a photo-realistic world that combines live-action photography with computer-animated characters.

The prehistoric creatures come to life in the most astonishing manner, flying, walking and climbing through forests, rivers, deserts, plains, valleys and mountains.

It is as close as we'll come to understanding what the pre-historic world might have looked like.

Had Disney's Dinosaur premiered last month, it would have made considerably more creative impact.

Instead, it is following on the heels of Discovery Channel's Walking With Dinosaurs, which achieved similar results with inferior technology.

Technically, Dinosaur may be worlds ahead of its TV predecessor, but it still looks like a familiar world.

There are a few times when the technology falters, resulting in dinosaurs that are crystal clear but backgrounds that are hazy.

This is less of a problem than the story and characters themselves.

The basic plot of Dinosaur is cribbed from The Land Before Time, a successful children's video animated series that premiered in 1988.

A meteor shower heralds the beginning of the end for the giant creatures, but a group of them manages temporarily to find a safe paradise.

To add their distinctive touch, the writers and directors of Dinosaur built in a subplot that seems lifted from Disney's Tarzan.

An iguanodon dinosaur egg is stolen and travels an enormous distance, until it ends up on an island in the heart of a colony of lemurs.

The mother lemur Pilo (voiced by Alfre Woodard) insists on raising the intruder with her own brood.

Aladar (D.B. Sweeney), as he is called, turns out to be the ideal son, brother and friend.

He also turns out to be a born leader, for it is Aladar who eventually shows the last herd of dinosaurs how to cross the desert to reach the promised land.

The first third of Dinosaur is enchanting.

The lemur family is delightful and Aladar is hilarious in his pursuit of being a lemur.

Things begin to get a bit shaky after the meteor shower when Aladar and his lemur family join the dinosaur exodus under the brutish control of Kron

(Samuel E. Wright), a self-styled general who has little regard for the creatures in his band.

Kron is Aladar's nemesis, but he is not the film's villain.

That role goes to the carnivores stalking the fleeing herd.

These creatures are as realistic as anything in Jurassic Park and are the only creatures in the film that do not talk. It's an awkward device that might prove confusing and frightening for preschoolers.

Dinosaur is a masterful achievement, but it is not a masterpiece.

It will be remembered and lauded more for its technology than its ability to connect emotionally with its audiences.

(This film is rated: PG )

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