Land Before Time Retrospective #9
Released: 2002
Quote from landbeforetimelover: Here’s another error. The area around Mo’s eye is originally the pinkish color but on one of the scene’s it was colored purple.
Haha, even before I popped into this thread, I noticed that while watching, and I often don’t pick up on little animation errors like that.
Anyway, I saw the film earlier today. Unfortunately, this is the first of the series that I didn’t really care for at all. Like, it wasn’t terrible or anything, but there wasn’t all that much I enjoyed about it either. Even compared to some of the prior sequels, this one was too fluffy and light-hearted for my liking. Despite the earthshake and the swimming sharptooth, there wasn’t much of a sense of danger throughout. I did like the design of the swimming sharptooth, and I think he could have been scary, but he just didn’t show up enough for it to feel like he was ever much of a threat.
Even the way he was “defeated” was pretty lame. The last we see of him is when he chases after Mo. Then later when the gang finds Mo still alive, all we get is Mo telling us about what happened after the fact. Although even if they had shown that, all we would’ve seen was Mo hiding from the sharptooth in a log, and then the sharptooth would’ve just swam away. Bah.
Speaking of Mo, he had a cute design, but the character himself was annoying. Why did they have to give him such a weird voice?
I’m also getting fed up with Mr. Threehorn. After his character development in the third film, he should’ve started to mellow out by now. But no, he’s still a big jerk. I’m starting to feel that he got flanderized into being “the mean, grumpy dinosaur.”
Lastly, the other films all had good plotlines, but the plot here was a little weak. *shrug* I just think they could’ve come up with something more compelling than simply guiding a goofy fish creature back to the sea. It’s ironic that the film opens with the kids singing about how bored they are, because the journey to the big water itself was on the dull side.
I don’t want to sound too negative. Aside from a bit of patchy CG work, the animation as per usual was lovely to look at. And the gang themselves are still endearing as always. But overall, I guess I was just disappointed with this one because I’d been enjoying the series up to this point.
