The LBT Project: The One With Animaniacs As Dinosaurs
figure 1 — Velociraptors
The U.S. Bureau of Fabulous Bitches was directed in the Fall of 2008 by the federal government to conduct an ongoing investigation into the scope of the Land Before Time (LBT) animated series. Our department is forging ahead on this by watching all thirteen movies in the LBT continuity. This is likely to be followed by reviewing the entire discography, fanfic community, and television show. You can read more about the project here. Our review of LBT One is here.
So, contrary to the belief of whiners, haters and skeptics everywhere, the USBFB’s bold Arcades-Project-esque efforts to explore the expansive universe of Land Before Time continue on this week with Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure. And the story just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
First, the plot: like some deeply troubled kiddie version of the Matrix series, LBT Two keeps on trying to chug out a vaguely exciting plot where the first movie’s conclusion completely resolves the possibility of any conflict. In the original, the whole idea of the Great Valley is that it’s a perfect place away from the danger and climate change that’s devestating much of the rest of the world. To keep the lifeblood pumping in such a dead premise, the LBT Two universe kicks the continuity to the curb and turns the Valley into one hell of a dark and dangerous place: egg-robbers infiltrate the Valley, the Valley seems to be filled with a host of quicksand/tar pits that the main characters almost drown in several times over (drinking game?), and not least of which the walls of the Valley are so weak as to allow a small army of T-Rexes to invade towards the end of the film.
As a result LBT Two basically patches up a few plots into an increasingly improbably interlocking set of devices that add up roughly for the entire length of an hour and fifteen minutes. Littlefoot and his friends are chomping at the bit of parental discipline and decide to catch two thieving dinosaurs they see stealing stuff in the Great Valley. This leads them to a chase where they find an egg, which later turns out to spawn a baby TRex that wants to eat meat and creates some momentary conflict with Littlefoot’s pals. A landslide that they set off as they chase the egg-hunters opens up a door for adult “Sharptooth” to enter the Valley. The adults fight them off and the kids learn that they should stay in their place. Queue ending music!
As we revealed last week: LBT Two marks the beginning of the three-movie reign of Roy Allen Smith (producer for Muppet Babies, and the exceedingly shortlived Beethoven animated series), that, like the grand old post-Washington presidencies of Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, seems to have set the tone for much of the rest of the series. Great Valley Adventure is particularly notable in this sequence since it offers up a host of changes to the formula of the movie. There’s a terrifyingly off-key musical element that comes into play that appears to continue for the next eleven movies, and introduces a cute marketable baby TRex, Chomper, to round out the original team. Also, the movie is conspiciously designed for massive TV syndication — there’s scenes that have a dramatic plot twist followed by a slow fade to black before cutting to the next scene, at intervals of about 20 minutes. There’s also a noticable continuation of the flattening that largely blunted the pretty dramatic parental death/abandonment issues at the heart of LBT One. As one reviewer noted, “It is rated G since absolutely nothing offensive happens. In fact, not much happens at all in the show, but given target audience of young kids and given how much fun it is watching these characters frolic about, perhaps that is enough.”
Though, evidently absolute santiziation and an overt “obey your parents” subplot just isn’t enough. One totally awesome review from an angry parent that the USBFB reproduces in full from Amazon, because it is amazing:
“Teaches Small Chidren Bad Behavior!” (One Star)
My almost-three-year-old had been watching these movies for weeks and I didn’t figure out until recently that they have been teaching him bad behavior. First of all, one of the little dinosaurs screams constantly throughout these videos and this teaches little kids to scream just to make noise. The movies are also filled with smart-alec, bratty language that kids watching it will pick up on, like: “See you, wouldn’t want to be you”, and screaming, “Its not fair!” while stomping their feet. One of the movies has a scene where the kid dinosaurs are going to “Show the grown ups that we aren’t babies anymore” by disobeying their parents and venturing into a dangerous swamp that they were told to stay out of.
There are so many good children’s movies out there that teach good values and behavior. This is not one of them, however, and as a parent I recommend not bringing it home.
Perhaps even weirder, during the transition from LBT One to LBT Two, there’s almost an entire replacement of the voice acting staff. Beyond lending a totally different and higher pitched timbre to the dialogue in the movie — the only one of the original cast remaining is Candance Hutson, who plays the female lead triceratops character Cera. Interestingly, this entire staff is randomly replaced by the exact same team of talent that powered most of nerdy kid favorite Animaniacs. This by itself wouldn’t make the movie oh so unique — voice acting is a pretty small community and it figures that they’d all wind up on the same project together at some point.
But LBT Two was released in December 1994, only about a year after Animaniacs’ debut in September 1993, which places the recording of these two projects at around the same time. What’s awesome here is that all these voice actors were shopping around the exact same voices to different projects. Whether or not it’s because none of these projects were regular gigs at the time or otherwise is tough to say from the historical record.
What this means: for much of the movie, we’re treated to the uncanny experience of having Pinky’s voice embodied in the form of a dopey velociraptor (well, Struthiomimus) sidekick to the movie’s (British) villain. Dot Warner’s voice also makes a brief cameo in the form of an angry Maiasaur mother.
Pretty amazing. Stay tuned for next week — LBT Three: Time of the Great Giving.
