The Land Before Time 30th Anniversary Retrospective Part 4

With the third movie being somewhat better than the second, how well would this fare? Let’s find out.

Our intro goes by the first movie, underwater. More specifically, the sea as a school of fish getchased by a marine reptile. But that won’t be our focus till the next film. The intro about the dinosaurs is short too, but it does remind of the changing world as with the first film.

With things still unchanged in the Great Valley, Cera, Ducky, Petrie, and Spike gather up food from a nearby tree. Littlefoot in the meantime chases a dragonfly out of the valley where he soon spots a herd of his own kind of walking to the valley. These Longnecks, his cousins according to his grandparents, have been traveling for a long time, but the news their leader, called The Old One, voiced by Tress Macneille, isn’t pretty. Their usual home has become a swamp with crocodiles making home in new rivers and small creatures forced to move to the trees. Worse is that it became very hard to see and so was named The Valley of Mists. Though they don’t plan to stay in the valley, with the Old One warning that changes would happen in the Great Valley, they do offer membership to any one of the Long Necks residing at the moment.

Upon being asked whether Littlefoot would be missed, Cera doesn’t want to tell him, unless they catch her. While doing so, Littlefoot stumbles upon another Longneck his age named Ali. While she’s nice to him, she becomes all Fluttershy when seeing the other four. Not wanting her to feel left out, Littlefoot spends the rest of the day playing with this newfound friend.

When they go back home, trouble rears its ugly head again. Grandpa has fallen ill to a disease that could only be cured by the petals of the Night Flower. However, the flower only grows in the Valley of Mists. The prospect seems hopeless: none of her cousins want to help, and even Grandpa has come to accept this and asks of Littlefoot that he and Grandpa go with the herd when the time comes.

Littlefoot would not have any of this and gets Ali to lead him the way to the Night Flower. She accepts, but on the condition, they don’t bring his friends along. Their journey takes them to a deep cave. Because the way they came through required adult help, they take another route when an earthquake causes a massive cave in. Faced with a tough decision, Ali runs back to the Valley to get the others.

Littlefoot explores the cave and comes across an Archelon named Archie. Not making any Sabrina comics, he helps Littlefoot clear up the rubble. But there is still danger in the form of Ichy, an Ichthyornis voiced by Jeff Bennett, and Dil, a Deinosuchus also voiced by Tress Macneille (if you haven’t guessed by now, Jeff Bennett, Rob Paulson, and Tress Macneille wear many hats throughout this franchise). The two don’t along very well, but they have no choice. Dil may have the strength, but she has poor eyesight. Ichy has the sight, but it’s not like he's gonna take anything at his size. Two sides of the same coin for the bag of chips in the vending machine. They find Littlefoot and Archie and attempt to eat them when the others arrive.

After a little argument, Archie leads the gang to exit leading to the Valley of Mists. And it’s true to the tales of the Old One. Cera gets lost soon after they enter, and the gang gets separated by a fight of two rival Pachycephalosaurs. But in the trouble, they encounter a small mammal who they later name Tickles. They soon find Cera being swept down the river, with Ichy and Dil in hot pursuit. In a few rodeo antics, Ali rescues Cera. While continuing on their journey, Ali explains that being around her herd for so long that she considered it out of her comfort zone.

While resting for the night, they happen to come across the flowers blooming and gather as much as they could. Ichy and Dil find them and give chase. Ducky gets knocked out and would’ve been eaten… When Spike speaks his first words. Losing their quarry again, Dil swats Ichy away before being chased by a plesiosaur.

Sans Prehistoric Stuart Little, the gang returns to the Valley and gives the flowers to Grandpa. Just after Ali says her goodbyes, Grandpa has recovered from the illness and moving well.

My verdict on this? If you see both the first movie and this one, you’d notice how very similar they are. A relative gets deathly ill, there is an earthquake, then the dangers of a new land with very little help from the grownups. Nonetheless, I find this one of the more memorable ones in the franchise, at least because of Cartoon Network’s Cartoon Theater. Ichy and Dil aren’t great villains, but the forced mutualism between them does give out quite a few jokes. The fact that Dil isn't another giant theropod was a nice change and the fact that both of them also speak Leaf Eater. The animation is better than the previous two, in fact, there are quite a few great scenery shots. The songs are certainly memorable; I recall that Cartoon Network once had a music video set to “It Takes All Sorts.”

My one problem is how some fans take the relationship between Littlefoot and Ali to a romantic level…

There’s a reason cousins shouldn’t marry

Would there be anything to change? Well, If I were to cut down on the songs, especially "Grandma's Lullaby" (it has been accused of ripping off "The Lion King," in my defense, Rooter mentioned The Circle of Life in the first film, a whole six years before then), I would expand more on the dangers of the Valley of Mists, maybe a Sharptooth would be using the fog to ambush the herds.

I would like to close off this retrospective In Honor of Linda Gary. You probably know her best for her performance throughout the He-Man and She-Ra series and provided her final years as Grandma Longneck up to this point before passing away. Considering the series is nearing its thirtieth anniversary, every honor for those who worked on the franchise is needed.