The Land Before Time (1988) Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Saturday. Today I'm going to be talking about a movie that, while my parents rented it for me a couple of times, I didn't own it on VHS or DVD until I became an adult. Now I own it on VHS AND DVD. So let's go back to prehistoric times and talk about The Land Before Time. Let's get into it!

I think The Land Before Time is my favourite Steven Spielberg era Don Bluth film. Next to An American Tail of course. The reason is that this movie is actually pretty simple. It's five Dinosaur children trying to get to the Great Valley, an area that hasn't been affected by drought and natural disasters like earthquakes. And it's short too. The movie is only an hour and nine minutes long, which is shorter than most animated feature films were by 1988.

The voice cast of this movie is pretty cool. Pat Hingle is the narrator and I only know him as Commissioner Gordon from the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman movies. The only other members of this cast that I recognize are, the late (and great) Will Ryan, who voices Petrie, and Candace Hutson, who voices Cera. Will Ryan voiced my childhood as he was Grubby in the Teddy Ruxpin franchise, he voiced Willie the Giant in Mickey's Christmas Carol, he voiced Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore and other Winnie the Pooh shows and specials in the early '80s, and he voiced a bunch of characters in various Don Bluth animated movies in the '80s and '90s, which are too numerous to count. Let's just say his voice showed up alot in the movies and shows that I watched when I was a kid. 

While this is the only movie that I've seen Candace Hutson in, I've actually seen her on VHS without realizing who it is. She is one of the kids in the 1990 direct-to-video episode of Disney Sing-Along Songs, Disneyland Fun which is one of my all time favourite Disney Sing-Along Songs tapes. For those of you who have seen it, Candace Hutson is the girl whose eyes go wide on the Jungle Cruise during "Follow the Leader".

Like I said earlier, my parents rented the movie on VHS for me when I was a kid. I think they may have only rented it once or twice though I do remember seeing the movie at Rogers Video. I probably also watched it on TV at least once too. But as the 2010s came along, I didn't have access to it anymore. But in 2017 my sister bought it for me on DVD while I was recovering from surgery, and I watched it up in my bedroom on either my laptop or my dad's portable DVD player and I loved it as much as I did when I was a kid. A few weeks ago I ended up getting it on VHS, also because of my sister. Her and her partner had gone to see his family up north for the holidays, and they'd promised to see if he still had any of his old VHS tapes there. The Land Before Time was the only one he still had, and they brought it home for me. And that's how I watched it last night for this review. 

I think one of my favourite parts of the movie is how the five child Dinosaurs, who are all of different species of Dinosaur, worked together, despite their differences, to take down their common enemy, the Sharptooth, or as we know it, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. You know, I'm wondering if the producers of Super Sentai took a look at this movie before deciding which Dinosaurs to use for Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, because all three of the actual Dinosaurs on that show, the Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and Pteranodon, are in this movie. Just an interesting thought.

Overall this is a wonderful movie. I don't think I've seen any of the direct-to-video sequels, though the only one I would've seen is The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure since that came out in 1994. And I think pretty much everyone who grew up in the late '80s and into the '90s saw this movie. Even if it's not their favourite movie, they still saw it at least once. I know I see it in most people's VHS Collection. Particularly if they were born sometime between 1984 and 1996. 

And that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back next week with lots more posts. I've decided I'm going to split up part 3 of my Movies I Saw in Theatres series into two parts, because I saw alot of movies in the 2010s, and as you saw with part 2, 21 movies made for a fairly long post. So stay tuned for part 3 next week and part 4 the week after that, with part 3 covering 2010-2015, and part 4 covering 2016-2019. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.