Land Before Time Retrospective #11
Released: 2005
Just saw this one yesterday. I didn’t really care for it. Thankfully it is pretty entertaining in places, albeit in a campy way.
The whole plot with the tree-sweets and the Great Valley residents forming a lynch mob was ridiculous. And Topsy’s behaviour was strange. Like, I get that he’s often abrasive and hot-headed, but he (and by extension the other dinos) seemed to be taking the whole situation too seriously. It especially clashed with how Topsy has otherwise started to mellow out by this point. Even the inciting incident for all this with Cera making fun of Littlefoot’s size for no real reason, and then him suddenly being all insecure about it, was bizarre. The characterization here felt uneven.
The Tinysauruses themselves were kind of a lame concept. Especially “Big Daddy.” I agree with some of the previous posters in that he was such a weird character. I groaned inwardly when he first showed up. More generally, I have read that tiny dinosaurs did exist in the prehistoric days, so I can see where they were coming from with the Tinysauruses, but eh, the whole thing could’ve been implemented better.
It’s also similar to the problem I had with Journey to Big Water in that the stakes and sense of danger wasn’t high enough. Even during the climax with the Sharpteeth, it just didn’t feel scary or intense at all.
There were a few genuinely good parts. Despite my aforementioned issues with Topsy, he had some lovely character moments with Cera. And Tria is a nice new character. However, I still feel kind of frustrated and baffled that they never addressed what happened to Cera’s original mother. Given how hostile Cera initially is with Tria, it really seems like something tragic happened. But, as Malte said, they beat around the bush with it. Regardless, the Tria subplot was interesting. More well-written than everything else going on. 😛
Quote from Ratiasu: Pretty much, one of the only parts I liked in that movie was the following dialogue exchanges:
“AAAAAH!” – Mr. Threehorn
“What was that?” – Grandma Longneck
“Eh…Mr. Threehorn again.” – Grandpa Longneck
“But what’s wrong?” – Grandma Longneck
“I don’t know, but I’m sure he’ll tell us…” – Grandpa Longneck
“Cera? Are you awake?…Look, I’m…I-I-I-I don’t…I…um, it’s just that…oh, this is so much harder than yelling…look. Tria is an old friend, and she doesn’t have anyone. She needs protection. And she’s really nice, and she…well, she likes me. And I like her.” – Mr. Threehorn
“But I want things back the way they were before! When you didn’t like anybody and nobody liked you!” – Cera
“I don’t think things are ever going to be that way again.” – Mr. Threehorn
Agreed. That was some great dialogue.
The funniest moment for me was near the end, although it was almost certainly unintentional on the filmmakers’ part. When the tree-sweets regrow and the dinosaurs are all sharing them, the camera pans around in a circle, and you can see some CGI dinosaurs. Not the first time computer graphics have been used, but it’s the first time they used it for the dinosaur animation, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. All the more jarring because the CGI dinos can be seen alongside the regular hand-drawn ones. Why on Earth did they do it that way? And it was for such a brief shot too, which only made it feel more unnecessary. It looked like something out of a PlayStation 2 video game. I actually laughed out loud at how jarring it was.