Let's Talk: Land Before Time III: The Time of Great Giving

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Now I know it seems odd for me to suddenly make a blog post and video this week on The Land Before Time, much less the 3rd in the series, I actually already have written about the first two movies. I wrote about them when I first started this blog and I kinda lost interest in posting. But now I am back at it again and this time I have been really consistent sense February. So I might as well finish what I started with watching all of the Land Before Time Series.

If you don't know about this movie, was originally released in 1995(1), and continues the story of our dinosaur friends from the first two movies. If you want to get an over view or recap of the film, I watched it through Amazon Prime Streaming for free with Ads and have linked the Wikipedia article on the movie at the end of this post.

So here are my thoughts on The Time of Great Giving:

Animation:

First off, the animation is quite pretty. It has a somewhat painterly look and sense it is from 1995(1), it is pretty safe to assume it is still all hand drawn. Overall the look and aesthetic of the great valley and the dinosaurs fit the previous film, nothing really has changed so far.

Narration:

If you aren't really familiar with the series, the Land Before Time movies have some narration and the beginning and end of the films. It's a mans voice that, in this film, gives a bit of an evolutionary introduction to dinosaurs. At the end of the film, it just closes it out with talking about how the events eventually get passed down and it would be known as "The Time of Great Giving". I think it's nice, but I kind of find it nostalgic.

The Plot:

I think the plots of most of these movies are kind of like back burner things. As an adult, the movie feels slow especially when you're 30 minutes in before the Dinosaurs set off on an adventure. But as a kid, this didn't feel slow; it felt like you could play dinosaurs along with it and more like it was giving time to build your dinosaur world.

There's also quite a bit of conflict going on. The Kids vs the Bullies, the Adults vs the Adults, The dinosaurs vs the environment, and the nice dinosaurs vs the sharp teeth dinosaurs. So there is a lot of content to use for imagination play as a child, but also some morality lessons sprinkled in for both children and adults. Like one big moment is where the lesson is brought up that if you only show your child anger then they in turn will only know anger. Which is a great lesson for everyone to hold on too, kindness isn't a finite resource so it should be spread around, especially to children who are still learning. That moment alone made me happy about these movies, just because they're older doesn't necessarily mean they aren't worth you or your kid's time.

The movie also shows the dangers associated with drought and the devastation of fire, which loosely brings in a message to respect nature. Mostly they use it as a way to showcase working together on things, like conserving water and working together to find food.

Final thoughts:

At a couple points I felt like the Grandparent Dinosaurs to Little Foot accepted his potential death quite quick. Like when a tree fell almost on Him, they kinda looked at each other like 'Ok'. Not a big deal but it seemed a bit odd to show them before showing Little Foot being alright.

This Movie overall is pretty good. Kind of slow as an adult, but it has nice messages and what kid doesn't love dinosaurs?

Dinosaur :)

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