To describe the importance of the Great Valley and imply a reference to the events of the first movie the song was quite suitable. The importance of the Great Valley had to be underlined at the beginning of the movie to lay out the stage. It could have been done by a dialogue, but I don't think a dialogue would have gotten the message across as well as a song:
Littlefoot: "This Valley is awesome!"
Ducky: "Yep, yep, yep, it is!"
Petrie: "Me no have worries about being hungry anymore!"
Ducky: "Nope, nope, nope, neither have I!"
Cera: "It was so hard to get here! Now we're safe! Safe at last!"
Ducky: "Yep, yep, yep, we are!"
Very cute. I like the song though, too.
Maybe the whole idea of sing-a-longs was to make it seem that little more appealing to the younger audiences. Admitingly a lot of them seem very superfluous and pointless to the plot flow but it does help to break up the film a bit. Don't forget that kid's have a much short attention span than adults so something a little different from the norm will help keep interest. Also, adults seem to be compelled to see a movie out to the end and pass their judgement afterwards (unless they honestly dispised it to the degree that they'd leave part way through it). For a child, as soon as the next interesting thing comes along then they're off and they've completely forgotten about watching a film (this is coming from an uncle of a hyperactive 3-year old nephew ) If kids aren't constantly engaged with what they're doing, they'll break off and look for something else. I think, by including these sing-alongs, kids are offered the chance to engage in a little change of pace and perhaps even join in themselves. It kept them locked to it.
I think Malte got a response to an email he sent regarding the additional length of the original LBT that was sliced from the final cut. I think the reason was that Lucas and Spielberg felt that the overall length of the film was too much for kids of the targeted age to sit still and remain interested (please correct me if I'm wrong here Malte). Hence, the reduced +/-60mins LBT movie rather than Bluth's initially intended length.
I dream of someday seeing Bluth's initially intended length...it sounds
amazing. Like---the best film ever made. The original LBT would probably be my favorite film
ever if it hadn't been so badly chopped.
Plus, pixar films are an hour and a half and have no songs!
I would sit through a four-hour cut of the original LBT if it existed.
But the sequels? They're direct to video. They can just leave and finish watching it later when they get interested again. The songs are unneeded. They take up like 10 mintues of these already too sho
