The Land Before Time (1988)

In 1979, Don Bluth quit his job at Disney and convinced a number of animators to come with him to start their own animated film production company. Their first two films garnered critical acclaim and success at the box office while Disney was seemingly stuck in a rut of films that failed to connect with audiences. Disney had to be sweating bullets when Oliver & Company opened against The Land Before Time and for good reason. Bluth’s liberation allowed him to tap into everything that Disney was lacking in the 80s until The Little Mermaid came along.

As water and food become scarce, a young Apatosaurus named Littlefoot and his family head out in search of the Great Valley- a land rumored to be untouched by the growing drought. Along the way, Littlefoot and his family are separated by a massive earthquake. Though dealing with grief, loneliness, and fear, Littlefoot commits himself to reuniting with his family. He soon picks up a hodge-podge of other young dinosaurs, forming a unique caravan. As the youths wander the wastelands for clues leading to the Great Valley, a dangerous predator is hot on their tails.

This film continues the success of Don Bluth’s animation team. Most of this film is full of crisp animation, rich colors, and a style that bests most of what Disney produced in the 80s. Each of the young dinosaurs is animated with just the right amount of anthropomorphism in that their dinosaur nature is never truly betrayed. The blend of two-legged, four-legged, and a winged dinosaur injects a nice sense of variety. There are a few moments of less sophisticated animation, where dimension lines are drawn over a splotch of one color. This was used during Bluth’s time at Disney in the 70s and, though I cannot blame him for falling back on a familiar technique, it still bugs me a little as it did with those Disney flicks.

The story is sweet and provides a good message to the target audience. The band-of-misfits-accomplishing-something-amazing storyline was used to death in children’s and young adult films in the 80s and is now terribly cliché but The Land Before Time rises above. Perhaps it is because our main characters are not people. Perhaps it is also because the only great thing the young dinosaurs do is fight to survive. Sure, they get creative in scaring off a group of aggressive pachycephalosaurids and come up with a plan to take on a T-Rex, but it’s never anything that seems too over the top.

Back in the day, The Land Before Time was a heartwarming tale of persistence and innocence. Millennials born after 1990 may not see much magic in the story but for those of us 80s babies, this is a joyful romp in childhood nostalgia. It may not be the masterpiece I grew up thinking it was but this film is still a winner and helped show other studios that Disney did not control the market on quality animated films.

RATING: 3.75 out of 5