The Land Before Time (G)
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This came out in 1988, when I was 13, but in my memory I feel like I was younger than that. I'm pretty sure I saw the movie at some point in the late 80s; whether it was in a theater or on VHS or what, I'm not so sure. In any event, I feel a bit nostalgic about it. But I didn't remember much about it beyond the fact that some young dinosaurs were on a journey. (The one thing I have always remembered is the line "Do not stop. We must stay together." But I didn't remember which dino said it. And my memory of the line was of it being much more dramatic and important than it turned out to be, when I re-watched the movie in 2026.) Anyway, the movie was directed by Don Bluth, and executive produced by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, among others. It has a pretty decent score by James Horner. I'm not sure how much I expected to like the movie, before I re-watched it, but I certainly wasn't expecting to dislike it. And I ended up liking it probably more than I expected to, however much that might have been.

The film is narrated intermittently by Pat Hingle, who also voices a minor character in the film. It's set in the time of dinosaurs, and the story basically begins with the hatching of some eggs. The dinosaurs, btw, don't go by the names we humans would later give each of their species. The main character is a baby "longneck" named Littlefoot. He, his mother, and his grandparents, are apparently the last of their kind, at least in the region where the movie is set. He soon meets a baby "three-horn" named Cera (pronounced like "Sarah", or "triceratops"). They start to play together, or at least Littlefoot thought they were playing, I'm not so sure about Cera. But anyway, her father stops them, saying that three-horns don't play with longnecks. Littlefoot learns from his mother that all the different kinds of dinosaurs keep to themselves, but Littlefoot doesn't understand why. And I don't think his mother had a good answer for that. (Honestly, it just seems like a kind of racism that all the adult dinosaurs engage in for no reason at all.) Though at least I guess the different species of plant-eaters travel together. They had run out of food where they lived, and they were all searching for someplace called the Great Valley, where food would be abundant.

Well, Littlefoot and Cera end up playing together in secret, until they are attacked by a meat-eater called a "sharptooth". Littlefoot's mother defends them, but then there's a huge earthquake, which leaves Littlefoot separated from his grandparents, and then his mother dies. (It was unclear to me whether it was a result of injuries from her battle with the sharptooth, or from the earthquake.) At first Littlefoot loses all interest in doing anything, but eventually he resumes his journey toward the Great Valley. He meets up with Cera, who has been separated from her own parents, and Littlefoot wants her to join him in the journey, but for some time she is determined to go her own way. Meanwhile, Littlefoot is soon joined by a few more baby dinosaurs: a "bigmouth" named Ducky, a "flyer" named Petrie, and a bit later a newly hatched "spiketail", whom Ducky names Spike. (I don't think Spike ever speaks in the movie, which is kind of odd, because the other dinosaurs started talking as soon as they hatched.) And eventually, Cera joins them as well.

I won't go into too much detail about their adventures together, but they were rather harrowing, at times. The movie could be rather scary, especially for younger viewers. It could also be sad. And at other times, funny, and ultimately there's a happy ending. I definitely liked how these diverse dinosaurs learned to work together and become friends, which might set a good example for the older dinosaurs. And overall, I just think the story was pretty decent. It was fairly simple, in a good way, but as I've said, it does run a gamut of emotions. And while the characters weren't too complex, I did like them. (If I had a favorite, it would probably be Ducky.) And I guess that's about all I can think to say. Oh, except that there's a closing theme song by Diana Ross, which was nice.

It was followed by a ton of direct-to-video sequels (thirteen of them, as of 2016) and a TV series. I'm not sure I have much interest in seeing any of the sequels, which I doubt would be as good as the original, especially because Bluth, Lucas, and Spielberg had no involvement with them. But maybe someday I'll give the first sequel a chance, and decide from there whether I want to see any more of them.