CG ANIMATION EVOLVES BIG TIME IN `DINOSAUR'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

While it is impossible to overpraise the visual splendor of Disney's first, in-house computer-animated feature, ``Dinosaur,'' it is definitely possible to overquibble the film's story points to something nearing extinction.

Yes, it is beyond thrilling to experience the film's wordless opening sequence, in which hundreds of dinosaurs forage for food and flee from becoming carnivores' meals, while a baby iguanodon, still in its egg, is transported by predator, rushing water and flying reptile through perspective shifts and photorealistic primeval landscapes of breathtaking scope and detail. And it can't help but disappoint when said hatchling lands in the nurturing lap of a family of wisecracking lemurs, who go on, ever so Disney-like, to raise the humongous orphan as one of their own.

Studio boss Michael Eisner is said to have decreed that the prehistoric critters talk like good company anthropomorphs should, no doubt in order to maximize the marketing potential of the reportedly $200 million production. There are also a lot of basic Disney cartoon elements to the storyline, a tale of loss and growth that echoes from last year's ``Tarzan'' through ``The Lion King'' and all the way back to ``Bambi.''

But while these shopworn tropes do exert a cheapening effect upon this profoundly sensuous movie experience, the story that John Harrison and Robert Nelson Jacobs' screenplay tells is, finally, an apt one. It's a fable of forced evolution distilled into a bracing, humanistic moral: the discovery of compassion as a survival tool.

And in this situation, the giant saurians and their furry little friends need all the tools to survive that they can get.

Our featured iguanodon, Aladar (voiced by D.B. Sweeney), grows up loved but still lonely on his primate family's isolated jungle isle. This is made touchingly clear as he watches his adoptive brothers and all the other adolescent lemurs perform their first mating ritual, a rite he's about 200 times too large to participate in. This sequence is as exuberant as it is moving, and is followed by one of awesome terror: a meteor shower that destroys the island and, presumably, signals the beginning of the end of dinosaur life.

Aladar and a few lemurs escape to the mainland. They soon join up with a desperate herd of assorted dino species trekking across a vast wasteland to a (hopefully) still viably green mating ground. The herd, which is largely composed of young orphans and aging invalids, is led by the hard-bitten iguanodon Kron (Samuel E. Wright), whose not unsound operating principle is to leave the weak behind for raptor and carnotaur food as the best way to ensure the safety of the fittest majority.

Inevitably, Aladar, with his enlightened, mammalian ``all-for-one'' philosophy, becomes a threat to Kron's authority. Also inevitably, an attraction develops between Kron's sister Neera (Julianna Margulies) and the sensitive rebel.

Another point in the story's favor: It ain't hard to follow. And this is one movie you don't want to waste cognitive power probing narrative subtleties on. Rather, you'll just want to drink in the most persuasive computer animation yet put on the big screen. The idea to set the characters against photographed desert, forest and mountain backgrounds was a stroke of genius. It utterly obliterates the sense of taking place inside an Etch-A-Sketch that previous all-CG productions like ``Toy Story'' evoke.

And while they may have personalities and abilities far beyond those of real, pea-brained dinosaurs, the movie's creatures are the most realistically generated yet. Their musculature, skin and brilliantly individuated movements make for a lifelike complexity of expressiveness. And despite the Disney-ish cutesification, there is more than enough savage, wild behavior here to convince us that we're spying on their real world (minus the advanced primates, of course) of however many millions of years ago.

Coupled with a story that, at its best, is as primal as the territorial impulse, ``Dinosaur'' employs superb artistry and advanced technology to create something very much like a natural wonder.

The facts

--The film: ``Dinosaur'' (PG; violence).

--The stars: Voices of D.B. Sweeney, Julianna Margulies, Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis, Samuel E. Wright, Joan Plowright, Della Reese.

--Behind the scenes: Directed by Ralph Zondag and Eric Leighton. Written by John Harrison, Robert Nelson Jacobs and Walon Green. Produced by Pam Marsden. Released by Walt Disney Pictures.

--Running time: One hour, 24 minutes.

--Playing: Citywide.

--Our rating: Three and one half stars