It takes some extreme talents to be able to straddle the line between ridiculously cute and gruesomely dark.
Now the case of 'Land Before Time' most of the darkness comes more in physical shading and how the artwork is betrayed, as opposed to most of the content.
You've got littlefoot's mother dying and all of the little dinosaurs getting stuck in that bleak volcanic environment, where they nearly drowned in tar pits, or fall into lava.
But otherwise the film's not that horrific.
The T-Rex is a scary creature, but you never really get the feeling that it's going to eat these little dinosaurs.
At least as an adult you understand that that's not going to happen.
But for some reason them being stuck in that tar tarp always freaks me out.
Come to think of it, they never show how they get out of that tar pit.
It shows that they're all clinging for dear life, but then they're just out of it in the next scene.
Which admittedly you need them to be unseen in that event, as it's their stuck together vestige underneath all that tar is what ends up scaring other bad dinosaurs away from one of their friends who is trying to evade capture.
It reminded me a lot of that Alec Guinness scene from the first Star Wars movie, where he chases away those Sand people.
I suppose that makes sense given that it's a Lucas inspired film.
Now that I think of it, that might be a direct reference to the Star Wars movie.
I'm kind of curious just how many other references there are too George Lucas or Steven Spielberg Works littered throughout this movie.
Honestly I wasn't looking through the background all that much as I was generally captivated by the story.
Land Before Time was easily my favourite film when I was a small child. And looking back on it now it's still really good.
The art direction is beautiful, sound and design is fantastic, everything has this wonderful sense of weight to it. You really start to notice those small details when the dinosaurs are running around and you can see there Imprints in the sand.
And noticing now as an adult's just how good the child acting is. I'm always super impressed of a movie when they can pull off good child performances as that's a near-impossible task even for some of the best movies.
And voice acting I think is even harder sometimes.
The only other series I can think that does as well as Land Before Time where old Charlie Brown skits and movies from back in the 60s and early 70s.
And sweet God everyone is just so darn cute here.
Ducky is the most adorable little thing in the world.
And at the end when her family adopts Spike, that just made my little heart sore with joy.
I always knew the story was simple but I never realized how much time they gave just the environment. There's so many moments where they're just characters wandering around looking at the world or just interacting with small objects. Not talking to each other and not giving off useless exposition.
It's something I think so many other children's movies could learn from. Children are kinda dumb, but they're not completely intact. They can understand a more subtle form of Storytelling. Sometimes you can just show them a beautiful environment and they'll get the point. Or even if they don't get the point they'll still enjoy it.
I never realized how much of this movie was just a Little-foot being sad about his mother's death. Obviously I remember it from when I was a kid, but I kind of forgot just how much of the film dedicates to this entire premise.
A good third of the movie is just our Longnick soaking around hoping to God to find his mother again but never actually doing so.
With another third of the movie being him connecting with these other random little dinosaurs and everyone learning to get along together.
It's such an emotional little film.
And I wish I had something interesting to say about it. But it's a Don Bluth movie and it's one of his most famous anything that could be said about Land Before Time has already been done. It's definitely worth a watch and I can understand how it ended up getting a thousand sequels later on. Are any of them any good?
No not really.
I know one of them has a baby T-Rex later on as I'm sure I saw one of those when I was a kid.
Not all that sure how it works with the premise of the original film given that there's always been a divide between the meat eaters and the plant eaters. But hey, we have to make an excuse to make another film so let's just introduced a new character with internal conflict.
And then never acknowledged how that's problematic.
Then again I think the little flying dinosaur is actually a carnivore in real life, or at the very least has the ability to eat both plants and animals. So I guess he doesn't really work with the original plan either.
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