The Land Before Time managed to wow audiences in 1988 with its adult atmosphere, striking visuals and unbelievably charming world and characters. It was the most Disney-like product at the time even though it wasn’t made by them, as creator Don Bluth created his own style of animation with these kinds of movies and it’s still a beloved classic to this day. Since the idea and characters are so timeless and of course, marketable, it was only natural that it would get its own sequel, though it would take a whole 10 years to even get to one. The film was bombarded with a massive number of continuations throughout the years, now onto 14 movies, and The Great Valley Adventure is where it all started. Set in the Great Valley, a safe haven for dinosaurs that want to avoid meat eaters, the five main cast of the first movie; Littlefoot (voiced by Scott McAfee), Cera (voiced by Candace Huston), Ducky (voiced by Heather Hogan), Petrie (voiced by Jeff Bennett) and Spike enjoy their safe lives in such a large valley, though they don’t enjoy being treated like babies by their parents. When they try to bring back an egg stolen by two egg-nappers named Ozzy and Strut (voiced by Jeff Bennett and Rob Paulsen), they unknowingly bring back the wrong egg. Deciding that when it hatches that they’ll raise it, those plans are quickly cracked as they realise the egg contains a sharp tooth (what a T-Rex is in their world). While at first, they are deathly afraid of him (for honestly good reasons), the group soon realizes he’s not going to hurt them and start to warm up to him, even giving him the name Chopper, but are faced with even more danger when they discover that the valley’s protective walls have been broken and sharp teeth (much bigger ones) are coming in. As a direct-to-video follow-up to such a large film, it’s no surprise the movie is not up to the same kind of standards; instead taking a simpler route and using the story and character template as a means of educating and entertaining young children with much simpler stories that would fit in an everyday cartoon, which this movie does, to its credit, perfectly fine. It does have some aspect that did try and replicate the feel of the first even with a few returning people, but it’s clearly a big downgrade and outside of kids, there is very little to connect with here.

The story is heavily weakened from where the original started off on. To go from an epic journey through a dangerous landscapes to reach their home without getting eaten, to ‘’I don’t want to be a kid anymore’’ is pretty distracting. Just looking at the movie from the outset, it’s clear that it’s not going to try and make an authentic sequel, but rather just use the Land Before Time template as a means of telling simple stories with easily marketable characters. With that said, for a smaller story it works perfectly adequately. While there’s nothing that could be gotten out of this that a Saturday morning cartoon couldn’t give a kid, it still has some intelligence behind it. The director for this film was Roy Allen Smith, who would go on to direct a few of the other Land Before Time sequels as well as LeapFrog Learning Videos, so this idea of educating kids through animated material is in this guy’s wheelhouse, and while nothing spectacular or new, its handled just well enough to work and doesn’t talk down to the kids.  Using the nature vs nurture element on a baby T-Rex is clever to show kids that evil isn’t born but created through environment and using such a black and white scenario in a world where there are obvious good and bad dinosaurs archetypes, makes it come across stronger, and even the fact that he does still try and slightly ”eat” the leads shows that sometimes it literally is part of their nature and it can’t be helped, even if it doesn’t make them a bad creature. It does show that looks aren’t what define a creature’s actions and more importantly that not everything that comes from a scary place is necessarily going to follow suit, and for the younger audience that’s it’s clearly going for, it can get this point across fine. The movie does try and keep that aggressiveness from the first movie, while nowhere near as strong, the animation style and the threats shown off do still put the characters in danger, so it feels better when they get out of it. Overall, the story has some good ideas and a good message, but with such a weak driving force, no big scale to it, and a real lack of any urgency, it leaves the film lacking much presence and instead a glorified kids show.

The characters all act the way they should, mainly coming from the fact that they are simple to understand and easy to write for, and despite the new writers like John Loy, John Ludin and Dev Ross, it doesn’t feel like they act largely different than they would’ve in the first film (outside of that harsh edge that came out in certain stressful moments). While they work in this environment and they do have personalities, the story doesn’t really give them anything where most of their personalities can be shown off in a great extent, more just giving the moral the strongest presence and using the characters just to illustrate it. You can tell that while they are very likeable roles with distinct looks and voices, they aren’t really characters that could have strong development or depth to them, so featuring them in more movies really is just an excuse to show them off again rather than to do anything with them. Some of the voice actors have changed for the kids, but they all are still pretty good at their parts and all of them work well off each other, you do feel like they are a group of friends. The villains of the movie are actually pretty fun and memorable, with famous voice actors Jeff Bennett and Rob Paulsen providing the voices. Bennett is good at the aggressive more maniacal voice, and Paulsen is perfect as the more dim-witted side with his Pinky-esque voice coming through. While it’s a shame that Maurice LaMarche couldn’t be a part of it, since the duo do have a very ‘’Pinky and the Brain’’ dynamic, Bennett does a really good job in his stead. The two are funny in the movie and while they are more opposing antagonists than villains as they don’t do much to the main group in the grand scheme of things, they are at least memorable.

The animation is the biggest downgrade from the first movie. The first one was golden, bright, and artistic, but still perfectly match the movie’s tone and emotional scenes perfectly, while this one clearly has a TV show budget and looks just as cheap; everything surrounding this movie was connected with TV shows; the director and writers work on TV shows, most of the cast come from TV shows, and the animation team worked on TV shows. Throughout the movie, there are some noticeable animation errors and even some instances of characters speaking with the wrong voice, but at the very least, you can feel that are trying to give the film a similar art style to that of the original movie. The backgrounds look nice enough, especially during a sunrise with the peach colouring, the characters all look right even if their mouths don’t always move at the right times, and most of the environments have the appropriately color scheme even if the movie is surprisingly muted in color, with a grey washed-out air around most of the movie. The writing does capture how the original characters talk with all the various names and unique phrases, and it’s good to see that the world is still timeless, and the writing is still memorable so these ideas could still be used in any form, mainly the reason why it got so many sequels. The score uses musical cues from the original James Horner score but has been replaced by Michael Tavera (who would go on to score the rest of these sequels), and while not as strong, it feels like a decent copy of the Horner sound. The film introduced songs into the typical Land Before Time norm, making it a staple for these movies in the future. Though it does take away from the realistic environment the first created, it fits with the kid-tone this one’s going for, and honestly the songs aren’t that bad written by an American female vocal trio named The Roches. They aren’t amazing but they have good melodies and are nice and hummable. The villains have a pretty good song, and even if some of the kids harmonize a bit awkwardly, they sing pretty well.

This movie does exactly what it set out to do; create a Land Before Time sequel that can appeal to small children and teach them simple lessons. While it’s a shame that it couldn’t be given the same treatment and respect the first one did, expecting this film to follow up a monster of a movie like the first is a huge step. For what it is, it handles itself fine enough that kids can get into it and adults can appreciate where the original idea came from. While the message is a bit overbearing on the plot, it’s a good message and it’s told in a memorable way, the characters are still likeable, the villains are fun, the songs are nice, the animation is okay, and it’s still a timeless story. It doesn’t have weight and really didn’t need to exist, but when it comes to various different animated dinosaurs’ movies, if you’re going to give a sequel series to one, might as well give it to the best. If you have young kids or like the first one, check it out and return to the time of the dinosaurs one more time.

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