"THE LAND BEFORE TIME II: THE GREAT VALLEY ADVENTURE "

Welcome : It has been exactly one month since I posted my first review of Mr. Bees brilliant movie buzz.

What a better way to celebrate my one month anniversary than to review the sequel to the movie I first reviewed. Before I get into my review , I am going to go a little bit off topic. I would like to congratulate all of the Kennedy Center Honorees !

Now back to the movie at hand .

BACKGROUND

Now I would like to point out that for this movie, I could find few behind the scenes facts. For some of this, I will be doing my hypothesis of what actually happened. This movie was released on December 13^th 1994 and it was directed by Roy Allen Smith, his first movie as a director.

Now here is my hypothesis as to why this movie was made. The big guns at universal noticed that the VHS and Laser Disk sales of The Land Before Time were doing so well that they decided to make a sequel. They also decided to make it Direct-to-Video because Disney was also having a tremendous success with Direct-to-Video sequels. Roy Allen Smith was hired to direct it and he decided to throw away the heavy atmosphere from the first movie and make it a musical. This was intended to attract the kids.

PLOT

This movie starts off with an opening narration similar to the one in the first movie. All through the movie the main characters: Littlefoot, Cera, Ducky, Petrie, and Spike, are dealing with their parents who are treating them like babies. There are two bad dinosaurs that want eggs. I really shouldn't say two, considering that in the movie, only one of them wants eggs and the other one wants to eat plants like all the rest. They steal an egg from Ducky's nest and then high jinx ensues and the bad guys drop the egg, but coincidentally the egg rolls back into Ducky's nest. The kids, who are trying to recover the egg from the bad guys, do not realize this, and they see an egg that is very similar to the egg in Ducky's nest, but bigger, and keep that. They think that this is Duckey's egg, but the egg hatches and it turns out to be a baby sharp tooth. They named him Chomper. Now the bad guys accuse them of stealing the egg. Littlefoot needs to find out how to take care of a baby and then (spoiler alert! ), Chomper gets into an active volcano looking for food. More high jinx then ensues and we find out that the wall that separates the “Great Valley” and the “Mysterious Beyond” has been knocked down. The adults want to put the wall back up. Littlefoot runs off to go find Chomper. There were grown up Sharpteeths in the “Great Valley” and we find out that they are actually Chompers Parents. They seal up the wall and everybody lives happily ever after!!

OPINION

First off , I am going to tell you what I did like about the movie. The title card is a vast improvement over the one in the previous movie which just looks like it is part the beginning credits. ( If you didn't know any better you would think that there is a man working on the movie named Land Before Time). Some of the voice acting is very good. Particularly Candace Hutson who does the voice of Cera and the only voice actress that reprise her role from the first movie.

Heather Hogan plays the voice for Ducky in this movie after Judith Barsi's tragic death in 1988. She does a fair job as Ducky. The voice actors who play the bad guys are very talented. Also, the actors who do the voices of Grandma and Grandpa Longneck are good as well. I will even tell you that they are the highlights of the movie.

Now for the bad stuff. First off, the animation is bad, but granted this is a Direct-To-Video movie and the budget for these are not the best in the land. The bad guys have no motive. There is never an explanation as to why they want the eggs although they are a type of dinosaur that can only survive on eggs (The average person does not know that ). Other strikes are that there is no continuity between the two movies and there is no mention of Littlefoot's Mother. Also, when they talk about the “Mysterious Beyond,” they act like they have never been there before (Didn't they spend an entire movie in there ?). The fact that the parent's treat them like babies is just so stupid because the kids went without any adults for a couple of days in the first movie. If my child went a couple of days without me and found his way back to me, I would conclude that they could take care of themselves. Mr Smith, “if you are reading this did you even watch the first movie??”

Only having one member of the original voice cast returning really hurts this movie because the majority of the voice cast does not know how to act!

In regards to the soundtrack, I liked the fact that they included the score from the first movie. However, the songs are simply bad.

I am sorry to say this, but I am giving only 1 and 1/2 stars out of 5. This movie currently has a 41% audience rating and no critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes . For some stupid reason, it was nominated for an Annie award, but it thankfully lost to ''The Gate To The Mind's Eye''. Well that's it for today . Join me next time when I will give a short review of 10 Robin William's movies.           

By Mr Bee

  

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