"The Land Before Time "

Welcome! This is the first edition of...

Mr. Bee's Brilliant Movie Buzz !

I will be reviewing old, movies and I may including new ones as well. The first movie I have chosen for this month is The Land Before Time (1988). This is third movie that Don Bluth made without Disney Studios. Many people say that this is their favorite Don Bluth movie, however in my opinion the best he made was Anastasia (1997). I believe his weakest movie was The Pebble and the Penguin (1995).

Back to the movie at hand...

Background

This movie, with Don Bluth directing, was produced by Steven Speilberg, George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy. Kennedy is best known in recent years as the new head of Lucas Films after George Lucas sold his company to Disney. They originally wanted to make this movie with no dialogue and just the narrator telling the story. This would be sort of like Walking with Dinosaurs, not the 3D movie that was released in late 2013. To appeal to a young audience they added in dialogue, which I feel was part of the reason that there were 12 sequels, a t.v. series and several video games. To make it a G rating rather than a PG rating they had to cut 11 minutes that were too violent for young viewers. They even considered (spoiler alert!) cutting out the part when Little Foot's mom dies. Omitting that scene would have been having him find the Great Valley alone without any explanation why his mom was not with him. They also took it to a psychiatrist to know to how handle that scene, and he said to add in a character that would tell him that his mom would always be with him.

Plot

The premise of the movie is that a baby “longneck,” named Little Foot, and his mom need to find the Great Valley, which had not been touched by the famine where they had been living. Along the way he meets other young dinosaurs, including Cera (a “three horn”), Ducky (a “big mouth” ), Petrie (a “flyer”) and Spike (a “spike tail.” At first Cera and the other dinosaurs do not get along too well because of her Tomboy ways.

Opinion

This movie is kind of predictable because we knew that in the end (spoiler alert!) they would get to the Great Valley. With that being said the beginning is kind of boring and Petrie in some scenes is funny, but in other scenes is kind of annoying. With that said, this movie in some places is very emotional. In the scene where Little foot's mom dies, it is kind of like the Bambi scene when his mom dies, but in this movie, unlike the other, it is not followed up by cute little birdies and pretty little flowers for hours.

Bluth's directing is very well done, and the acting is well done by all of the voice characters in this film. Like all Don Bluth movies, the animation is brilliant. The music in this movie is very good as well, especially the song played in the end credits.

Alot of people agree with my opinion and this movie currently has a 74% critics' rating and a 78% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

This movie was nominated for a Young Artist award but lost to Beetlejuice; it was also nominated for a Saturn award but it lost to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

I am giving the Land Before Time 4 out of 5 stars, a good movie.

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By Mr. Bee

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