A gentle, positive family adventure built around teamwork, perseverance, and courage, with villainy driven by greed and exploitation rather than malice. Peril is presented in a non-graphic, reassuring way appropriate for its young audience.
After their ship is caught in a storm, the PAW Patrol pups crash-land on an uncharted tropical island inhabited by dinosaurs, where they meet Rex, a pup who has been stranded there for years and become an expert on the island's inhabitants. When Mayor Humdinger, the franchise's recurring antagonist, begins recklessly mining the island for profit, he triggers a dormant volcano, and the pups must complete their biggest rescue mission yet to save the island and its creatures.
Humdinger's motivation throughout is exploitation for personal gain rather than cruelty for its own sake — he wants to extract the island's resources regardless of the harm it causes. 1 Timothy 6:10's warning that "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" is a fair thematic summary of the film's actual conflict, presented in a way young children can follow: taking more than you need, without regard for consequences, causes real harm.
Marshall, the franchise's clumsiest and most accident-prone character, gets significant focus in this installment, built around a message of trying again after failure rather than giving up. Reviewers across the political and religious spectrum, including Catholic Review's OSV News (which gave the film an "A-I, general patronage" classification), have highlighted the film's consistent themes of perseverance, courage, and the value of every team member, however small, having something to contribute.
Violence: Mild — frequent peril (volcano eruption, dinosaur stampedes, rescue sequences) but handled gently, without graphic content; the MPA rating is specifically for "mild action/peril." Language: Minimal — occasional words like "crazy," "butt," and "stinky." Sexual content: None. Spiritual content: None of concern. Positive themes: Teamwork, perseverance, courage, opposing exploitation and greed, and the value of every team member.
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie scores 88/100 — Spiritually Safe. This is genuinely appropriate family entertainment: gentle enough for its preschool-through-early-elementary target audience, with positive messaging that holds up to biblical scrutiny rather than merely being inoffensive. The only caution is for especially sensitive very young viewers around the volcano and peril sequences, which several reviewers note are more intense than the franchise's television episodes, though still mild by general film standards.
See the Plugged In review and Catholic Review's assessment. See our Christian Movies for Kids hub.