65 million years on and dinosaurs still rule

A few nights ago I had the pleasure (and it really is a pleasure)of babysitting some of my little cousins while their parents went to some function or other. They always run me ragged, making me watch kiddies’ movies with them, play games with them, arbitrate in their disputes, and so on. So I decided that, if I was going to have to watch a children’s movie, it would at least be one of my choice, so I dug this tape out of storage and showed my wild and diminutive relatives what animated movies are meant to be.

The basic story goes as follows. Littlefoot is a longneck (Brontosaurus), born into a loving herd consisting of his mother and grandparents. Cera is a threehorn (Triceratops). They are both born into a world that is being changed by volcanic eruptions and climate change and earthquakes. The dinosaurs are all migrating to the Great Valley, a land where food is plentiful and everything is perfect. But dinosaurs prefer their own kind. As Cera’s father says when he finds his daughter playing with Littlefoot, “Threehorns never play with longnecks”. A clear stumbling block to a beautiful friendship.

When Littlefoot and Cera find themselves about to be prey for Sharptooth (the Tyrannosaurus Rex), Littlefoot’s mother fights off the vicious carnosaur, but at the cost of her own life. An earthquake separates Cera from her parents and Littlefoot from his grandparents, and the two young dinosaurs must find their own way across the disintegrating world of the Age of Reptiles to the Great Valley, guided only by the words of the little Brontosaur’s dying mother.

Along the way, they meet up with other young dinosaurs who’ve been left behind in the Great Migration: Ducky the swimmer (Hadrosaurus, I believe), Petrie the flier (Pteranodon or Pterodactyl), and Spike, the spiketail (Stegasaurus). Together, they must learn some lessons about life, friendship and cooperation, if they’re ever to make it to the Great Valley. Oh, and they’ve still got that Sharptooth to deal with, too…

This movie is in many ways the predecessor of such amazing movies as Ice Age and Finding Nemo – all are adventures through wonderful worlds that are foreign, yet familiar. But the world of the Mesozoic is, at least to my mind, more incredible than the world of the glacial periods or the modern ocean. As a zoologist, I can appreciate how much more diverse the ocean is than the Mesozoic was, but there’s still something in the back of my mind that says wow whenever I think of a landscape populated by creatures half the size of an Olympic swimming pool, and at the same time by their close cousins the size of a chicken. A world where reptiles swam like fish or flew like birds and mammals were tiny little vermin sneaking around in the night.

The characters are likeable, but not annoyingly cutesy, and are also fun and funny. The dialogue is cool, too, and Ducky and Petrie have a hilarious dynamic between them. You laugh with them, you feel glad when they triumph over adversity, and you might even shed a tear for them at some point in the movie (no, I won't tell you why or when).

The soundtrack is perfectly suited to the movie. The theme song tugs at the heart, without being soppy or silly. And the characters don’t break into song and dance routines, which would just spoil the mood and make the whole film seem silly. That’s another way in which this film resembles Ice Age and Finding Nemo. Definitely a good thing.

As a young lad (at 20, I’m practically a fossil now, but not quite as tough), dinosaurs fascinated me (and you, too, you might as well admit it). I used to devour books about these fearsome reptiles, from little kiddie picture books to Encyclopaedia Britanica entries. Watching the movie, I found that even now I can still name the man who named the Tyrannosaurus Rex or the Brontosaurus, or lecture on the different evolytionary pathways represented by ornithischian and saurischian dinosaurs. If only I could accomplish this memorizing feat with university work…

Anyway, the point is that kids love dinosaurs. And why not? Strange reptiles in all shapes and sizes, that dominated the terrestrial world (as far as vertebrates are concerned) for hundreds of thousands of times as long as human history stretches, unmatched monsters like the T. Rex, and such wonderful oddities as the thick-skulled Pacycephalosaurus or spike-tailed Stegasaurus.

Somewhere along the line, most children seem to lose this love of the weird and the wonderful in nature. It’s a little sad. A lot, really.

For those of you who like to look for scientific accuracy in your kiddies’movies, I might as well say that the movie is not entirely accurate. For example, the overall setting appears to be the late Cretacious, but the brontosaurs are thought to have become extinct long before this time. That said, the film does report things as accurately as can be expected – there are no flowering plants, not even grasses, and the insects and other animals match my understanding of what existed back then, and so on.

This is an incredible adventure through an amazing land, featuring wonderful characters. Since I've run out of adjectives, I'll just ends by saying that it's really good and you've got to watch it at least once. Okay?