US Release date confirmed!
It comes out Feb. 27th. I got the information from a commerical when I was watching TV earlier this morning. So for everyone in the US, that is the official date.
Bought it!
Watched it!
Now, what can I say about it....
First, let me say I've only watched it once so my review here is somewhat generic due to my lack of recollection of detailed facts about the film.
First of all, if you saw LBT 11, you may find that this movie feels quite a bit like LBT 11. Littlefoot's new voice actor is reasonably good, with no complaints from me. Honestly though, Littlefoot doesn't get a heck of a lot of lines in this movie, which mainly focuses around Petrie (as one would expect).
The story seems to focus on a "bar-mitzfah" so to speak, for the Flyers. The young ones are to demonstrate their maturity and skillfullness in the air by flying a routine with their fellow flyers. The story contained a couple of sub-plots:
One focused on our new character, Guido, a creature who didn't know who or what he was. After some experimentation, he was adopted into Petrie's family (temporarily or not, I don't think is certain), despite the fact that he didn't believe he was a flyer.
Another focused on Cera's relationship with her family after Trisha's egg appeared on the scene. She felt excluded and unimportant until the end where she discovered that she had a special place in her family, despite her younger sibling.
The main plot appears to be Petrie's preparation for the Day of the Flyers. Overall, this story seemed fairly typical for a modern LBT film; quite black-and-white (Petrie couldn't do it, then suddenly he could do it perfectly) and with simple themes involved, such as being who you are and being proud of being unique.
While there were a couple of amusing lines (Grumpy Tria: "Did you lay this egg??
: "), the dialog was kept to a minimum between most of the gang. Petrie and Guido were the main focuses, which is great if you're a Petrie fan. One thing that came up in this movie that has never been mentioned before now, was that Guido actually took note of Petrie's unique speaking in one scene. Guido was giving advice to Petrie and Petrie repeated the words of wisdom back to Guido, in "Petrie-speak". Guido nodded with a simple comment, "Close enough!"
One thing that I just have to mention:
Remember back in LBT 11 when we reached a general consensus that "thou shalt not have plant eaters tickling sharpteeth"?
:
Well.....let's just say that fell through. -_-
After an epic (aka long....) sleepwalking scene starring Guido, the gang ends up in the Mysterious Beyond, of course running into a sharptooth species that none of them had ever seen before. Guido gets slurped into the sharptooth's mouth almost immediately.
Oh no! How does he get out of this one!?
Well...he gets the brilliant idea to pluck one of his own feathers (yes, we have another feathered character now) and use them to tickle the mouth of the huge ferocious sharptooth, who proceeds to open his mouth wide (and Keep it open!) allowing his dinner to run free.
While it is *perhaps* in the realm of possibility, this scene does certainly seem questionable. I will admit though, that the number of questionable scenes were kept significantly lower than LBT 10 or 11, unless somebody can point out some that slipped past me on a first viewing.
LBT 12 didn't have any serious continuity errors. Everything seemed to make sense with regards to earlier films. The film, while fairly accurate and dynamic (many characters changed their outlook on their situation and their lives), some characters were kept quite static.
Spike's character was barely used at all in this film. He blunders a couple of times, forcing the Gang into awkwward situations, but other than that, his role in the movie is very trivial. Spike seems to almost be disappearing from the series, losing his identity as the "strong silent type" and being used as a more gluttenous dumb-dumb. I find this to be a bit disappointing, as Spike's character could be made to be very mysterious and interesting, if given the chance.
We see very little of Littlefoot and Ducky in this film, mainly because Petrie and Guido are taking most of the screen time. When they aren't on screen, Cera's side story is being developed. I accepted the side story of Cera's family, but I still feel that the idea of an older sibling being ignored while a younger sibling gets All of the attention, was blown a bit out of proportion. Cera was Literally completely ignored for over half of the movie, unless she was asked to babysit Trisha. This seemed out of character for both of her caretakers. Even dispite the egg and the newborn, it seemed that some excessive "artistic licence" was used in this side-plot to emphasize the point that Cera was feeling relatively unwanted or unimportant. I feel that perhaps he friends could have been given a larger role in this side story, to comfort her or help her. Unfortunately, this side story basically resolved itself in time, when Cera was able to rescue Trisha from a Huuuuuuuge fall from the sky....which brings me to another unrealistic moment:
This fall took many seconds to complete. I have, as a child, dropped things off a 12th story balcony which landed faster than trisha fell to her impending doom. Trisha must have fallen a good 100m or so, making even a perfect catch a pretty rough landing. Both Cera and Trisha walked away from this disaster, completely unharmed. This again, I think was taking 'artistic licence' a bit too far. They could have simply made the fall shorter to resolve this one.
Overall StoryThe story seemed to reach a bit farther than the last LBT film, bringing in a few side-plots. I must admit though, for the amount of time this took to produce compared to the last few films, I expected more. The development was very different from LBT 11. Instead of using a series of gradual incidents like LBT 11 (the multiple encounters with the tiny longnecks, the multiple encounters with Tria, etc.), LBT 12 seemed to work on using fewer events, each of which had more effect on the storyline. LBT 12 seemed to be, for the most part, an "all or nothing" kind of story line. Cera's caregivers wouldn't listen to her, then suddenly they did. Petrie felt like he Had to be part of the group, then suddenly (near the end)felt it was best to be himself. Either the problem was solved, or it wasn't. Petrie couldn't fly his routine, then suddenly he could. Guido wasn't asked to fly by Petrie in a VERY opportune moment (when they were being chased by the sharptooth) for Whatever reason. The writers could have developed Guido's flying in this scene as well but chose not to.
New charactersTrisha's character created a unique situation in Cera's family, but unfortunately, this scenario was carried a bit too far. Cera's relationship with her caregivers struggled throughout the entire film because they simply didn't talk to her or listen to her for most of the film, except when they wanted her to babysit. I liked the idea of the new baby, but it could have been more interesting than simply "We're focusing all of our attention on the baby and none on you".
Guido is a unique addition; a character who doesn't know who he is, where he came from, or what he's doing there. I suspect he simply sleepwalked into the Great Valley after many months of drifting away from his birthplace, where he was abandoned in some form or another.
Sound and MusicThe theme music (the opening piano theme) from LBT 11 is used a couple of times throughout the film, as is music from various films, mainly from LBT 5 onward. The music from LBT 3's fire scene was used a fair bit in this movie in disaster situations. Overall the music seemed mixed a tad sloppily and there were actually a couple of sound glitches (about 2/3 the way through, you can hear a *click* of the sound turning off and coming back on, as though a new audio track is playing - almost as bad as the timing *beep beep beep* heard in one scene transition on the LBT 4 DVD
). No elements of the If We Hold On Together theme were used in the movie. I think perhaps this music may no longer be licenced to the LBT Development team (but then, the theme was used very briefly in a recent LBT TV episode...). it's probably too expensive to pay royalties to James Horner to use his 19-year-old music that only the most dedicated fans will feel nostalgia and connection to.
The DVD box claims 5.1 sound but I dont have the setup to prove this at the moment. It all seems to work fine in 2-channel mode, with no missing dialogue or other problems.
The songs were okay though nothing especially memorable or spectacular. Flip Flap and Fly is sort of a Theme song for the film, which suits well enough, based on the recent trend that LBT films are taking. The songs in the series follow suit nicely with the TV series.
The first song, however, I found exceedingly long and not especially interesting. This is probably my new least-favorite song in the series. I can't remember what it's called now.
Overall ImpressionDid I like the film?
Well, I thought it was marginally better than LBT 11 but it's redeeming qualities were only satisfactory. The animation was as good (or poor, however you want to say it) as any other LBT film in the past 5 years. Most of the liquid effects seemed very out-of-place (the title screen iwith the lava is a very clear example of liquid flowing over seemingly nothing, and being pasted into place).
The new ideas, while unique (sleepwalking dinosaurs who repeatedly wander aimlessly to their doom, I couldnt' help being reminded of the classic "Lemmings" games
) were, again, merely satisfactory. Everything in the movie fit into what can be accepted as a modern LBT film, however whether that's good or not is up to you. To me, all the elements were there, but nothing had much of the emotional impact, uplifting spirit or feelgood-ness, found in the earlier films. I suppose this movie was basically what I expected, deep inside, but it didn't have the individual character or immersive emotions to really hold my interest.
To me, it's more unsatisfactory than good, but if you liked LBT 11 and the new LBT films more than the older LBT films, you may very much enjoy this one. I would say it's better than LBT 11, but it's in the same realm of movies.
Physically, I'd say better than LBT 11, but I would probably be more likely to watch LBT 11 simply because I enjoyed it more in general. LBT 12 was good but I couldn't warm up to it very much.
