The Outlaw Comes to Town

I think, at this point, it’s better to view the Land Before Time films not as actual films, which they were billed at, but as episodes of a TV series. When trying to view these films as films we have to hold them up to higher expectations. We expect there to be continuity, for characters to have growth and arcs that will carry over into the next film because, by the nature of sequels in a series, these characters are expected to evolve. People get upset when one film wipes away the progress a character made in a previous film. Films are events and those events should have weight to them.

But a television show, especially a television show for kids, doesn’t have that weight attached to it. Sure, if we were talking about a serialized drama we’d expect arcs and evolution, but most kids shows are expected to keep their characters frozen in amber, with little in the way of continuity carrying over between the episodes. If you watched Rugrats, for example, you didn’t expect the kids to grow up or change or evolve, this despite the series going for nine seasons, three films, and multiple specials (of course, that also ignores the fact that a spin-off did feature grown up versions of those characters, but that’s besides the point). When you watched a kids show you were there to see familiar characters.

And that’s really what these movies are at this point. They aren’t sequels to The Land Before Time proper, not really. They don’t have the same level of animation quality, they don’t explore similar themes. They aren’t looking to continue pushing the characters forward at all. If a true sequel came out that featured Littlefoot and his band of friends going out and becoming adults, that wouldn’t necessarily violate anything that happens in these direct-to-video efforts, but it could also completely ignore them because, at the end of the day, these are all inconsequential filler. They’re random episodes of Dinosaur Rugrats, and, really, nothing more.

That stood out pretty clear to me in this sixth effort, The Secret of Saurus Rock, because this episode is all about the kids daydreaming about being heroes. They hear the story of “The Lone Dinosaur” from Littlefoot’s grandpa, a tale of a hero coming into the Great Valley decades (or longer) ago, saving a little dinosaur and his family from an evil sharp tooth. He came in, put himself in danger, and fought off the sharp tooth, sending the bad dinosaur packing. Then, as quickly as he arrived, he left, leaving just a legend behind him. Oh and sometime after, a weird rock burst from the ground in the shape of The Lone Dinosaur, supposedly, and now it watches over the Great Valley, keeping it safe.

This, naturally, prompts the little kids to want to play “hero”. While playing their game, the kids – Thomas Dekker as Littlefoot, Anndi McAfee as Cera, Aria Curzon as Ducky, Jeff Bennett as Petrie and Spike – realize they’ve lost track of Cera’s young niece and nephew, Dana (Nancy Cartwright) and Dinah (Sandy Fox), and they have to go chase off after them, leading the crew to Saurus Rock, a real place that apparently really exists. The little ones damage the rock formation, though, which apparently will unleash a curse on the land, spreading bad luck across the Great Valley. This is all timed, it should be noted, to when a long dinosaur, Doc (Kris Kristofferson) comes to the Valley. Is he the cause of the bad luck, or is he The Long Dinosaur in the flesh, back to protect the Valley once more?

The first question we have to ask at this point when we’re evaluating any of these Land Before Time films is whether anything in this movie actually matters? On that front, the answer is “no”. Doc is a side character introduced for this film who barely gets any fleshing out, hangs around to teach Littlefoot a lesson (that Littlefoot’s Grandpa is the real hero), and then vanishes back out into the land, presumably never to be seen again. We’ll never see Saurus Rock again, I’m sure, and hell, we’ll never see Dana or Dinah again, either (and I checked, just to make sure). Nothing here has any consequence on the films ahead. Making it a very self-contained slice of a story.

Does that matter? For an adult sitting in the audience, probably. When you introduce characters that, you’d expect, would offset the status quo in future films then it becomes a big deal when they characters don’t matter. We’ve seen that before, in each film, where characters come in, have a single adventure, and then vanish out into the mists once more. But the films have also shown they can bring back characters, like Chomper, so you would think that if someone of importance comes in then they should be relevant. Dana and Dinah, being direct relatives of Cera, should have importance to them… but they don't. Not long term.

Their purpose in this film is to teach Cera a lesson about responsibility. Maybe. It’s not entirely clear because the film doesn’t really follow up well on it, and it muddles the whole purpose of the plotline. Cera gets mad at the kids and they run off, which prompts the adventure to Saurus Rock, but once she meets back up with the kids they don’t seem bothered or even care that she was mad. Cera’s father gets mad at Cera for losing the kids, “they’re only babies,” he says, but hell, Cera is barely that much older and you’re expecting her, a literal toddler that’s been frozen in amber for six films now, to be responsible for two babies? Who’s the real jerk here, man?

This is all a big deal if we view this as adults through the lens of this being an actual film. But it’s not an actual film. We can’t treat it like that. This is one episode of a series that, essentially, released once a year and then entered into the library of little kids for them to watch over and over again in between other direct-to-video offerings in the process. If you were five and you got this (after inheriting the rest of the collection from your older sibling who grew out of the series with the fourth or fifth film) you’d probably be overjoyed to have this adventure. Maybe you even were able to coax your older sibling into watching it with you, and they could relate to Cera having to take care of her younger family members. Perhaps it was a bonding moment. From that perspective I guess the film functions, at least a little.

But it’s still a pretty bland movie with a bland story. Kids wander off, get into trouble, get chased by a predator (but not a Predator, which really makes me wish we now had a Predator in the Land Before Time film) and then learn a lesson about heroes. It’s a story we’ve seen five times before, in essence, and the basic beats are starting to become as fossilized as the dinosaurs in these films will become, some day. You can’t be mad at The Land Before Time series for never changing because, this deep into the run, that’s exactly how it’s going to be.

So you have to enjoy the little pleasures. The first act is a silly bit of Western fun, with Doc playing the outlaw, wandering hero, the kids singing a little Western song about a lone rider coming to town, and it’s just a daft lark. That Western motif is dropped after the first act, without any comment, and the film moves on, which isn’t really great for the theming of the film. Even within one of these movies things can’t change and the fossilized formula has to be followed. It’s all very piecemeal, half-baked, and underdeveloped. It’s not just weightless and inconsequential; the film can’t even commit to its own ideas for a single adventure.

As an adult watching this film now, I was bored and annoyed by it, for the most part. Knowing that nothing in the film would matter when we move on to the next one was already annoying enough, but then to have the film fail to even commit to its basic storytelling for the length of its run was more bothersome still. And all of this for another retread of an adventure we’ve essentially seen multiple times before? Yeah, my brain shut off really early and I found I just couldn’t care at all.

But then, I recognize that this film isn’t for me. It wasn’t for me when it first came out, either, as I was already a teenager and had long forgotten about The Land Before Time at that point. Six films deep, I’m not sure who exactly this film is for (not fans of the original, and not anyone that was a small child when the first sequel, The Great Valley Adventure) came out as they would have aged out of this series as well. It’s meant to little kids, new to the franchise, who want to see more adventures of Littlefoot and his friends. Were there that many of those kids still around for this sixth adventure? Well, they did make eight more (plus a TV series) after this, so presumably yes. But that feels like a pool that’s going to continue diminishing as the series goes on, and you can’t help but think, as sales drop and less and less kids care about these dinos, the quality of these films is going to continue to falter.