Dinos Gotta Work Together

As we discussed in the review for The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure, these The Land Before Time sequels aren’t in the least bit necessary. The first film was a complete and whole story that told its grand adventure, imparted its various and sundry artistic merits, and then ended right where it needed to, with no need for a sequel. That was part of what the second film struggled with: how do you continue an adventure where the characters have reached their destination and now get to live in peace and harmony? The sequel didn’t know, effectively giving our heroic child dinosaurs a tiny adventure before, otherwise, keeping them trapped in amber once more.

That, I think, is going to be the biggest flaw of any of these sequels: whatever happens in the film can’t shake the status quo. Littlefoot, Cera, and all the rest reached the Great Valley. That’s the end for them. Anything that comes after can be an adventure that shakes things up within the film, but by the end it has to reset itself right back to where it started, with all the characters living in harmony in the Great Valley. That’s because these films can’t have a long, deep continuity; that had to be ready to be pulled randomly from a shelf (at a video rental store or a home collection) by a tiny tot that couldn’t read, thrown in to a VHS or DVD player for them to watch while the adults to anything else. If Littlefoot and friends suddenly weren’t in the Great Valley, it wouldn’t make any sense.

As such, any film in the franchise has to be able to tell a solid enough story within that narrative confine. Littlefoot and friends will find a way to save the day, no matter what danger, big or small, befalls them and their community. Everyone will learn a morality lesson, the Great Valley will be saved, and nothing else about their lives will change, all of it to be forgotten by the next film because we can’t expect kids to watch these in order. And, indeed, the third film of this series already acts like what happened in the second film never happened at all. Chomper, the sharp tooth that had a major role in the second film: completely gone, never to be mentioned again. New adventure, character reset, let’s move on.

But if we can just roll with that and accept each film on its own merits, well, this third adventure, The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving honestly isn’t all that bad. If you compare it to the first film, sure, it’s lackluster. That was a large-budget theatrical film with one of the great animated artists, Don Bluth, at the helm. These direct-to-video movies don’t have Bluth, nor the budget, and so they’re always going to be artistically reduced by comparison. But if you just accept that these are, in essence, TV episodes of a The Land Before Time series, well, it does work reasonably well just for what it is, which is certainly more than I could say for the second movie.

This third adventure opens with flying rocks (read: meteors) falling from the sky. They travel over the Great Valley, causing earthquakes as they land, but none of the dinosaurs in the valley are hurt or killed. The kids – Scott McAfee as Littlefoot, Candace Hutson as Cera, Heather Hogan as Ducky, Jeff Bennett as Petrie, Rob Paulsen as Spike – don’t really understand what just happened, but since everything seems to be fine, they move on as kids are able to do. But the adults are worried, especially once the water of the valley starts to dry up.

It seems that, somehow, the flying rocks caused the water into the valley to stop, and the adults – Kenneth Mars as Grandpa Longneck, Linda Gary as Grandma Longneck, John Ingle as Mr. Three-Horn – suddenly have to face a future where there may not be enough water to go around. Mr. Three-Horn decides that everyone has to start rationing, and only certain dinosaurs can use the watering hole at certain times. No waste is allowed. The kids, seeing everyone stressed out, decide they’ll find the source of the water and what caused it to stop, that way they can fix it. But when their journey takes them outside the confines of the Great Valley, they realize that this adventure might need more than just their small strength to handle.

If we’re to take any one moral from this film it’s that kindness and working together make a community stronger. We see this from two different plotlines in the movie. The first is with the adults, bickering and fighting over the water. It’s due to stress, yes, and the film actually does a good job of illustrating that. But what we see is that when the adults put their stress aside and work together, they’re able to tackle their problems. Sure, that’s a very simple plot, and it’s not going to challenge anyone, but it’s still a good lesson for a little kid to learn.

Meanwhile we also have a set of three slightly older dinosaurs that are introduced this time around – Whit Hertford as Hyp, Jeff Bennett as Mutt, Scott Menville as Nod – and they’re essentially teenage bullies for our little heroes. They fight and bicker and try to steal everything Littlefoot and his crew have. Of course, when danger comes, it’s the little kids who step up and help out, and they teach their bullies that everyone can work together and be friends, that what makes us different isn’t so bad.

This, I think, is actually not the best lesson to try and teach. While, yes, it is great for people to work together and set aside their differences, and it would be great if everyone could do that, the way the movie goes about teaching it doesn’t really feel realistic. If little kids are getting bullied, even helping their bullies out probably isn’t going to change anything. Someone that wants to be a bully likely has reasons they became jerks, and just inserting yourself into their business, even if you do help them, likely isn’t going to change anything. More likely they’re going to get even madder at who they bullied and double down on it.

I guess that’s too much nuance for a kids film to try and impart, especially in an hour-ten. And I get the impulse to try and tackle bullying in a kids film since that’s something little ones would eventually have to deal with, I’m sure. I applaud the thought, it just feels like maybe the creators here should have given a little time, a little more nuance to the subject to try and flesh it out a bit better. Five more minutes or so on the bullies and their story, or a little more interaction with the bullies and the kids to try and develop this plotline better, might have made it work better than just “one single action can magically heal the emotional scars that turned them into a bully.” That’s what’s unrealistic for me.

That bitching aside, I do think that this film has more going for it than the second film. The fact that I’m debating the merits of its plotlines speaks to that. Plus the film does actually build and develop its ideas to a crescendo. There’s a fire, an attack by sharp teeth, moments where the teams all have to band together and work for the greater good. While I wasn’t necessarily worried about the characters in the film (because, again, I understand that by the end of the film we’re going to reset everything back to neutral) I did appreciate that there was legitimate conflict that could raise concern. It’s not a bad climax for the film.

In general this is a marked improvement for the series after the really terrible second entry. It’s not up to the standards of the first film, of course, but considering the constraints of a direct-to-video market, there’s no way it could be. On its own merits, though, as a way to entertain kids with characters they know and like, this film works fairly well. It’s light, it’s fun, it has some decent (if, admittedly, underbaked) messages, and it provides a decent little adventure that likely wouldn’t annoy adults. Can’t really hope for much better, I guess.