Reader's Choice - The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island

First of all, I'd like to "thank" Matt Conroy for being the first to vote on my new feature where readers can pick which movie I view and write about. His selection was the 1997 animated family film "The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island"

The movie opens with a shot of the solar system for some reason, with planets that would be put to shame by a pre-school art class. We then hear a voice-over describing the story of a band of dinosaurs who live in "The Great Valley," where they co-exist in peace. There is a group of young dinosaurs who are led by Little Foot, a child brontosaurus (apparently baby dinosaurs were the size of small cats according to the animators - but no matter).

The Great Valley is decimated by a swarm of locusts that reign down and feast on all the edible plant life. It took them an awfully long time to get to The Great Valley, but they did, and now Littlefoot and the gang (including several older dinosaurs that behave like your standard movie parents) must venture out in search of new land with fresh vegetation. Apparently the locusts either got lazy or ate too much to follow them.

Littlefoot and the other Triassic tikes decide to strike out on their own without their parent's permission in order to find a suitable living place. They conveniently end up finding a paved land path that takes them to an island, that lo and behold has all the leaves they can eat! But their joy is short lived when the path is flooded and they cannot return. There is a young pterodactyl with them (that George Lucas must have used as an influence for the awful Jar-Jar Binks) that could easily fly back and get help, but he is afraid to fly over the "Big Water." In any decently run dinosaur society he would have either been forced to go or eaten for being a complete pansy-ass.

They run into an old friend on the island - a baby T-Rex named Chomper or something, and his family (island not as mysterious as advertised). I assume he was in the preceding 4 movies, but alas, have not seen them. There is a battle with a great white shark, who must have traveled back millions of years of evolution just to feast on poor little dinosaurs. They obviously make it out alive, amidst a series of 4 horrendous songs (3 of which I fast forwarded through) and are eventually saved totally at random by a giant finned dinosaur - that has a British accent for some reason. End of Movie.

Well played Matt Conroy, well played

1 out of 4 stars