Children Ruin Everything

We’re all taught that the basic structure of a good story is that it has a beginning, and middle, and an end. You’re taught that your story sets up a situation that needs to be resolved, takes its main characters through their trials and then, in the end, resolves the problem one way or another. A truly great story does all of that in such a way that by the time you reach the conclusion you’re not only satisfied you get an ending that closes off any need for further questions. Your characters reached their destination and they did it so well it closes the book, so to speak, on their life.

Disney, as a company, used to understand this. There were the Disney PrincessesReleased in 1937, Disney's Snow White was a gamble for the company: the first fully-animated, feature-length film ever created. It's success lead to the eventual creation of the Disney Princess franchise, which has spawned 13 main-line films and multiple spin-off movies and shows. and their tales, and once the movie was over. No trotting them out for further adventures, especially not in theaters, because that would cheapen the brand. But the direct-to-video market changed things, and films that at one point had clear endings could be extended with further adventures. Kids wouldn’t realize that Cinderella's or Belle’s additional adventures weren’t theatrical quality or weren’t really “official” because, hey, it had the Disney logo and seemed real enough. But Disney at least knew that these films were coming after the real story was over. The ending was reached and whatever came next was just a lesser story that you could ignore.

All the sequels to The Land Before Time went direct-to-video, so in a way you could argue that production studio Universal understood that as well. No one, six years later, was really itching for a sequel to the adventures of Littlefoot, Cera, Ducky, and the rest because, hey, their story was done. What more was there to tell when the grand adventure was about these kids reaching the Great Valley to live with their herds. The story was over and we’d reached the ending. There wasn’t anything left to tell.

This is something that the first sequel, The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure, doesn’t really have an answer for. Why should people (read: kids) care about what happened next to these characters when the big adventure is already done? Honestly, they shouldn’t, since this story is threadbare and does little to push the characters forward in any real way. The sequel is a story of caring and sharing and learning little things about yourself, but it doesn’t meaningfully make any changes to the status quo that was set by the end of the first film. It’s a side adventure, a cheap little brand extension, but barely a real sequel at all (except in the length of time it takes to tell this cheap little story).

We rejoin our five little dinosaurs – "long neck" Littlefoot (Scott McAfee), "three horn" Cera (Candace Hutson, the only cast member to reprise their role from the first film), "swimmer" Ducky (Heather Hogan), "flier" Petrie (Jeff Bennett), and "spike tail" Spike (Rob Paulsen) – as they play silly games and have small adventures in the Great Valley. One day Cera decides they should cross an area of swampy quicksand that their parents have specifically forbidden them from crossing. Cera convinces them to do it anyway, even when Littlefoot tells them not to and, predictably, they all fail to cross and start to sink. So they have to be rescued by the adults, who ground them all to stay close and not leave the nesting grounds.

Immediately Cera convinces them to leave the nesting grounds. This is so they can run away from home and hide up high above. But while scouting an area to hide in, the kids see two egg stealers Ozzy (also Bennett) and Strut (also Paulsen), snatch one of the duckbill eggs. They chase the egg stealers, and manage to get them to drop the egg, but the kids miss that the egg rolls back home, safe and sound. Instead they find a different egg, one belonging to sharp teeths, and take it home. They realize the mistake but soon enough the egg hatches, revealing a baby sharp tooth, and most of the kids get scared and run off. But not Littlefoot, who decides the baby, who he names Chomper (also Paulsen), should be raised. Now he just has to figure out how…

Presumably each of these films is going to follow some kind of formula. The kids get into trouble, they are taught a lesson, they fight against the “restrictive” control of their parents, and then eventually learn the lesson and realize they need to be better. In this case, the kids are resisting the fact that they’re kids and they aren’t big enough to do the things their parents do. They go places they shouldn’t, they get into trouble, they cause chaos. But once the baby sharp tooth comes along, they learn that they have to care for something else and sometimes “no” is important because it sets boundaries. It’s important to listen to your elders because they’re just watching out for you.

I suppose it’s a fine lesson to learn, and if you were a kid watching this on home video then maybe it would sink in. Of course, the storytelling is basically little more than the kind of “learn a lesson” formula you’d find on any Saturday morning cartoon, just dragged out to an hour and fifteen minutes due to this movie needing to reach “feature length”. So there’s a lot of padding, a lot of time spent on side characters, like Ozzy and Strut, that doesn’t really add much to the movie, and so much singing just to fill time.

Because, yes, this film breaks from the format of the first film in one key way: it’s had actual songs sung by the characters. This puts it more in line with the animated Disney features of the era, animated musicals with some song and dance thrown in along with the action. That’s fine, I guess, although it does feel weirdly shoehorned in for this sequel when the original film didn’t need this at all. And I think maybe it would have even worked, in context, if the songs were any good, but they just aren’t. The music and lyrics are shallow and bad, and the child singers are terrible. Off key, off beat, and just awful. They were clearly not hired to sing, but then were made to do it anyway.

Naturally I can’t review this film at the same level as The Land Before Time. That was a theatrical family film made on a larger budget while this was a cheap knock-off shoved out on home video so that little kids would have something to watch while mom and dad got to have a break. The two films are at different levels. And some credit where it’s due, the animators did a good job of making this film at least look like a decent sequel to the original, even if (on the budget they had) there was no way they could match the artistry of the Don Bluth team from the first movie.

As far as direct-to-video kids fodder is concerned this was fairly inoffensive. If you had a kid and they wanted to keep watching Littlefoot and the crew then this film worked. It was cutely animated, with some basic sharing and caring learning thrown in, and there’s nothing offensive about the story in any way. Hell, it’s probably a safer watch for little ones since no one dies and nothing bad happens at all (unlike in the first film).

But at the same time, it’s a threadbare and shallow sequel that adds nothing to the original film. “Oh look, it’s the dinosaurs, again. And they’re just being kids, again.” I doubt that anything that happens in this film will have any bearing on adventures going forward, and I’m fairly certain even the lessons learned here will be forgotten by movie three, let alone beyond that point. This is a film made to capitalize on a name, meant to grift extra sales and goose profit margins. It feels totally capitalistic and pretty darn empty. Kids might like it (and lord knows thi\s one sold well enough to keep the franchise continuing onwards) but there’s little here to capture the attention of anyone else. And I’m sure I’ll be repeating that refrain over and over for the coming films as well.