Many of you listed him as a "most hated" character.
With all his mistakes I think that Cera's Dad is a most interesting character to examine. Looking at his attitude (and general threehorn attitude) in the original movie and his behavior in later sequels he may possibly be regarded (funny as it sounds) as a precursor of threehorn / non-threehorn relationships. I know this may sound stupid, but he came across as the worst racist in the original movie and he certainly had not abandoned his attitudes in LBT 2 and 3. There were later racist remarks in LBT 5 and 6 as well. Nevertheless he is learning. In LBT 7 he accepts (though he is very embarrassed by it) the opinion of the other dinosaurs as him being the one to delay everything. In LBT 8 we have him fool around with Littlefoot's grandpa. He won't ever ridden himself of all his prejudices, but he is learning and to some degree improving himself. This is something that cannot be said about many other characters. Most of them either don't change at all or else are so perfect already that there is no need for them to change.
What do we know about Tops' youth? It is very likely that he was raised in a racist manner. For somebody like that it would be extremely difficult to overcome prejudices. What tragedy befell him in the original movie? Where is his wife? Where are his other children? Whose children are Dinah and Dana (who by their looks don't seem to be the same species as Cera)? I think that there is a lot more to Tops than the "tough racist" as which perhaps he wants to be seen.
For myself Cera's Dad is just very hard to like, he frequently makes really bad decisions that end in either getting him or others killed. He blames Littlefoot for the kids always going off on their own, ignoring the outside circumstances that force them too, 3 of which are the direct result of his own stubbornness, and he's never properly called out for any of this. He does get more likeable once Tria comes around and he does soften up, but man is he far from my favorite charachter
I kinda agree with both of these viewpoints to an extent. I can acknowledge that Topsy is one of the more nuanced characters when you look at how he develops over the course of the films. However, I'm largely with Cloud here in that he's just difficult to like. A bit ironic considering that Cera is one of my favourite characters while Topsy is one of my least, but there you have it.
His first major scene in the series
("Come, Cera! Threehorns never play with longnecks!") doesn't paint him in a very flattering light, but it's a necessary moment in establishing how the dinosaur species are segmented and prejudiced against each other. Likewise, I enjoyed his character development in the third film when he comes to realize what a lousy father he's been and how much of a jerk he is in general.
But then, over the next several films, and he largely remains a racist jerkhead. Which is realistic in the sense that most people who are mean and/or prejudiced probably wouldn't outgrow those traits quickly, especially if they've been that way all their lives up to that point. All the same, it made Topsy hard to warm up to. I do appreciate some of his more subtle moments where you see that he's not so bad deep down, but even despite that, he seems a bit too much of the "stereotypical grumpy dinosaur" at times.
