The Land Before Time (1988)

[Willets Point]

Cute baby dinosaurs trek across a barren wasteland in search of the mythical Great Valley and learn a lot about not being prejudiced and working as a team along the way. I found it uneven over all. The animation is absolutely gorgeous at times and then crappy the next scene (the dinosaurs keep changing size!). Are they going for naturalistic-looking animals or cutesy anthropomorphic dino kids? And the plot is lifted from dozens of family films from Bambi to An American Tail (the latter not-coincidentally director Don Bluth's previous film). It ended rather abruptly too as if they needed to meet the running time. I expect kids aren't going to really notice the difference but I think this could have been a much better movie with a little effort. My son liked it. The Sharptooth was pretty scary for him and the death of Mother Longneck prompted lots and lots of questions. Well really everything prompted lots of questions. But he wants to watch it again.

PS - Spike, the lazy stegosaurus who eats all the time, totally rules.

[Benjamin Grimm]

My experience has been that kids, when they're little, are not very discriminating about what's good and what isn't.

Somehow I managed to avoid ever having to watch this one. Since my youngest is now nine, I seem to have dodged this particular bullet, at least until grandchildren come around.

[dgwphotography]

Oh God - Dinosaurs with eyelashes...

Our oldest used to watch all of these over and over and over and over and over and over and over.....

[Ceetar]

Land Before Time is a Classic.

I dunno, maybe you had to be there.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm about 65 million years too young to have been there.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

This didn't make me cry or nothin'.

(An American Tail was better, though.)

[Centerfield]

What's with the killing of the moms? My wife and I caught this on TV one night and thought "Oh maybe we should get this for the boy." Quickly nixed it after the violent death of Mama Dino.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Maybe they were trying to be like Disney, where almost none of the characters have mothers, and those that do have to endure their deaths. Many instead have step-mothers, who are, of course, evil.

[Willets Point]

Don Bluth was a prominent animator for Disney in the 60's and 70's before splitting off and creating competing company that put out several hits in the 80's. So yeah, he was a spawn of Disney.