NOTE: Originally posted May 2010 in the old Live Bloginations forum; reposted here after it was “archived.”
The past few days have been glorious, my friends! I washed the taste of Dingo Pictures’ Anastasia
(saga now complete!) out of my mouth by gorging myself on Disney cartoons. I re-watched The Princess and the Frog, put on my old tape of Silly Symphonies, and devoured early Mickey shorts. I feel rejuvenated. I feel alive again. I feel like I can tackle any movie you throw at me!
Except the one I’m about to review.
My friends, let us go on an adventure. Let’s step back in time, back in common sense, back in brain power. Let’s watch Dingo Pictures’ “Dinosaur Adventure”— watch, and cringe.
Part 0: Exposition Time Go!
(You can skip this and go straight to Part One if you already know about Dingo Pictures, their horrible track record, and The Land Before Time.)
The Victim: "The Land Before Time." As if it weren’t savaged enough by the sequels.
The Land Before Time is set in the age of dinosaurs and tells the story of a young brontosaur (long-neck dinosaur) named Littlefoot. Due to a lack of food, he, his family, and many other dinosaurs in the area decide to journey to the Great Valley, where food is plentiful. During the trip, Littlefoot is separated from his relatives, and in one of the saddest moments on film, he watches his mother die. He decides to journey to the Great Valley by himself; along the way, he is joined by Cera, a “three-horn,” Ducky, a “swimmer,” Petrie, a “flier,” and Spike, a… um, an eater. Together, the unlikely friends manoeuvre dangerous terrain, tar pits, and lava, all while evading the terrifying Sharptooth.
The Perpetrator: Dingo Pictures, a German-based animation studio specializing in rip-offs of better and better-known animated films— aka Mockbusters. Infamous for their abnormal animation, despicable drawing, deplorable dubbing, poor plotting, poorer pacing, egregious editing, and really rubbish writing, Dingo Pictures really makes some of the worst movies you will ever watch. Anything that could be construed as entertainment is conspicuously absent from their films.
The Crime: Dinosaur Adventure, also called The little Dinosaur [sic] on their site. The first few lines of their own description of the movie read, “It couldn’t take a long time, and then the little dinosaur would eclose. Finally the eggshells crackled. "It is a boy", the dinosaur father shouted lucky.”
Oh dear.
I’ve actually already seen this once, when I was young, naïve, innocent— stupid. I tried to wipe it from my memory with copious amounts of Brain Bleach; it doesn’t work so well for cleaning the brain, but drinking it sure does help you forget. My vague recollection is that it has terrible animation, bad voices, a nonsensical plot, and annoying music; it shamelessly rips off another movie, but doesn’t even copy it right; and none of the designs look right. In short, it’s just like any other Dingo Pictures movie. Right?
… right??
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