Land Before Time IX, The: Journey to Big Water (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Family	Main Menu Audio & Animation Scene Selection Audio Game-Ducky's Deep Sea Discovery Game-Cera Goes Home
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	71:30
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Charles Grosvenor
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	John Ingle Thomas Dekker Anndi McAfee Aria Noelle Curzon Rob Paulsen Jeff Bennett Jim Cummings
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	James Horner Michael Tavera

    The Land Before Time series of films has to be one of the most successful series ever produced. Each movie seems to have just the right combination of characters, story, colour, movement and music so that younger children just love them. Journey To Big Water is the ninth in the series and it has lost none of the charm of the previous films.

    While adults will not be particularly entertained, they will be happy with the life lessons that are built into each movie. Through the story, the various characters learn about the consequences of certain actions and attitudes. The music is very simple but the kids just seem to love the songs that are dotted through the film.

    All the regular characters are in this film, Little Foot, Cera, Spike, Petrie and Ducky. They are joined by the guest star for this film, Mo. MO is something like a prehistoric dolphin, albeit a very brightly coloured dolphin. Extensive rains have created a flood and MO, who normally lives in the big water (the ocean) has been washed inland. He is discovered by Little Foot and they become friends. The gang decide to help MO find his way back to the big water. Along the way they meet major trouble in the form of a very large aquatic meat-eating dinosaur. Eventuality they make it to the big water and we have yet another happy ending.

Video

    Presented at what is probably its original direct-to-video 1.33:1 aspect ratio, it is of course not 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is very sharp and the shadow detail is as drawn. There is no low level noise at all.

    The colours are vibrant, bright and multi-hued - perfect for the kiddies. They are also free of any noise.

    There are no MPEG artefacts present and a complete absence of any film to video or film artefacts seems to add weight to the proposition that this came straight from the computer that rendered it.

    The lack of subtitles is a problem - not all Australians can hear clearly and some of them are children.

    This is a single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Dialogue quality is excellent as is the audio sync.

    The music is directed at the kiddies with simple melodies and words. While you won't be whistling these tunes, the kiddies do seem to like them.

    There was very little activity from the surrounds - there was some ambience, but little else. I was a little surprised that none of the music made it into the surrounds as this is usually the first thing to go there.

    The subwoofer was quiet for the night which is a shame, as there were a few occasions where it would have added some depth to the soundtrack and physically backed up scenes like the big earthquake.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The centre section of this 1.33:1 menu plays a series of scenes from the movie with the menu items down the left hand side. The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0.

Game: Ducky's Deep Sea Discovery.

    A very simple game where you use the course keys to select a series of items in an underwater scene. Pressing Enter will reveal what is behind the item. The object is to find the missing eggs. Not very exciting and no skill required.

Game: Cera Goes Home

    This little game is much better than the first. You are presented with a very simple maze with Cera at one end and her father at the other. The object is to move Cera along the correct path using the cursor keys. A little bit of fun for those about four years old.

    The region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Littlefoot's Playhouse
• Sing-Along-Songs
• DVD ROM : The Land Before Time Pre-school Adventure game and colouring pages
• Closed-captions
• Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1) soundtrack
• French (Dolby Digital 5.1) soundtrack

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• nothing.

    This would give us a clear R1 winner.

    These movies seem to have an almost unlimited re-watch potential for younger kids. When the first film came out, only VHS was available and after a few months it looked very sad indeed due to the number of runs that it suffered in our house.

    The video is very nice.

    The audio is good.

    The extras are simple; one good and one not so good.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall