Land Before Time VIII, The: The Big Freeze (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Main Menu Audio & Animation Game-Littlefoot's Puzzles; Seek & Find Karaoke-Family; The Lesson
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	75:40
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (18:19)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Charles Grosvenor
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Aria Noelle Curzon Rob Paulsen Thomas Dekker Anndi McAfee Jeff Bennett Robert Guillaume
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	Michael Tavera James Horner Billy Martin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Dutch Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.33:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English German Dutch Hebrew	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Land Before Time is a series of animated movies. I vaguely remember seeing ads for the first one (it was released in 1988), but I hadn't realised how successful it was until I found myself reviewing the eighth movie. The later movies have gone direct to video, which would explain why I don't recall seeing ads for them in cinemas.

    Land Before Time VIII is subtitled The Big Freeze. It is not talking about an ice age, I think, but rather a particularly bad winter, with snow falling and covering all the food in the Great Valley.

    The central characters in the Land Before Time series are a number of young dinosaurs of a variety of species. Telling which species is which is not too easy, because the immature dinosaurs haven't developed all the characteristics of their parents yet — I'm guessing based on looking at their parents. There's Littlefoot, who appears to be something like a brontosaurus; Cera, who is a Triceratops (she only has one horn, so far); Spike, who is an orphan (which makes it hard to tell what he'll grow into) — there's some talk of him being a "spike-tail"; Petrie, a pterodactyl; and Ducky, whose species I don't recognise. Part way in we also meet Tippy, who is a stegosaurus.

    All these dinosaurs are plant eating. The only encounters with a meat-eating dinosaur (a Tyrannosaurus Rex, unsurprisingly) are rather, umm, negative. I suspect the makers were simply playing it safe, rather than trying to suggest a vegetarian life-style.

    All the dinosaurs talk, both children and adults, some with slight accents (Petrie and Ducky talk a little oddly, a bit stilted, but understandable). The children are expected to listen respectfully to a wise old dinosaur, Mr Thicknose, who is a variant on a Triceratops without horns. Mr Thicknose was voiced by Robert Guillaume, who was the only voice actor I recognised (you may remember him playing the title role on Benson) — he has a good speaking voice, but cannot sing to save his life. And that's a shame, because there are three songs in this movie, and he "sings" one of them.

    The first song, The Mad Song, is about getting angry, and how one is expected to behave. It's a bit of silliness, and while it has no particular redeeming values, it does no harm. The second song, Family, and the third one, The Lesson, are both a bit heavy on the moral values, but American cartoons have never been afraid to lay on the moral values with a trowel. At least the moral values they are espousing aren't objectionable ones.

    All-in-all, this is a fairly harmless 75 minutes of entertainment for children, complete with the heart-warming sentiment that family doesn't just mean blood-relatives. It's not high art, but it should keep them amused while you take a breather.

Video

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, which is the intended ratio, because this film went direct to video. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is clear enough, but more than a little soft. Shadow detail is an irrelevance in animation, but this particular style uses very primitive shading, with just a single shade substituting for finely graduated shadowing. Film grain is no problem. There is no low-level noise.

    Colour is good, but there's little subtlety in colouring — each of the dinosaurs is basically coloured a single shade, with a lighter belly colour and darker spinal colour. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    I didn't notice any film artefacts. It is possible that this movie was shot directly on video, thus obviating film artefacts, or it may just be that this film has never been screened theatrically.

    There is a fair bit of aliasing (mostly mild) and some dot crawl on the black lines outlining the characters. But there's no moire (no fine patterns for moire), and no shimmer. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in four languages, including English. I watched the English subtitles, which include some description of sound effects. They are fairly accurate, well-timed, and legible — they're white with fine black outlining, in a nice rounded font.

    The disc is single-sided and dual layered, formatted RSDL. The layer change comes early at 18:19, and is virtually invisible inside a silent black moment.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English, Dutch, or German. I only listened to the English, but I'm advised that the Dutch is pitch-corrected, unlike the English or German.

    The dialogue is clear and comprehensible. Audio sync is not a real consideration for animation, but there are no obvious glitches, and no dropouts.

    Michael Tavera is responsible for the score, some of which is derived from the original score (for the first Land Before Time film), which was by James Horner. There's additional music from Billy Martin. The songs are credited to Michele Brourman and Amanda McBroom.

    The surround speakers get no significant use, except for some minor tinkling for snow falling.

    The subwoofer gets plenty to do, providing footfalls for the larger dinosaurs, and the occasional ominous rumble.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The extras are clearly aimed at the child audience for this movie.

Menu

    The menu is animated with music.

Puzzles — Littlefoot's puzzles

    These are four jigsaw puzzles, each with six pieces (and always in the same order). They are easy to do, and have pretty pictures on them.

Puzzle — Seek and Find

    This is a fairly simple puzzle where the player just moves the cursor to match a highlighted shape. A correct answer is rewarded with cheering.

Sing-along

    Two of the songs provided in karaoke format:

• Family (3:16)
• The Lesson (3:02)

    The Region 1 version of this disc has DVD-ROM features, including a screensaver. Apart from that, the only differences lie in the languages available (the R1 offers French, the R4 offers German and Dutch). All I can find suggests that the R1 transfer is not substantially different, so unless you need a particular language other than English, I'd say you could be equally happy with either version.

    The Land Before Time VIII: The Big Freeze is a children's movie, presented quite nicely on DVD.

    The video quality is good enough, but rather soft.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are appropriate to the age of the intended audience.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall