En busca del valle encantado 3: La fuente de la vida

First of all, I do think it is an improvement on Land Before Time 2, which was passable, but lacked heart, which was what made the original so poignant. The Time of the Great Giving is probably the best of the countless sequels that border from good to unwatchable, but suffers from being too preachy at times. The animation is surprisingly good, but isn't quite true to the style of animation in the original. In most scenes it had some lovely colours, but had some flat backgrounds in others. The incidental music by Michael Tavera was excellent, especially the Firebird-like music in the fire scene. It was nice to hear the heart-rending main theme from the original, but whereas in the original it made me weep buckets, it didn't have an effect on me here. The songs are okay, Kids Like Us being the best one, and Littlefoot's singing voice is for once pretty decent, but the other two songs When You're Big and When You're Standing Tough came across as rather unmelodious. The story is a very nice idea, about the values of friendship, survival and sticking together. There is also some nice dialogue, but the film further suffers from being too short and being devoid of any real emotion. I will say that the voice talents were very impressive. Ducky is still funny, with similar dialogue we associate her with from the original, though it doesn't quite feel the same without the sweetness and vulnerability of the original voice actress, the late Judith Barsi. Scott McAfee is decent as Littlefoot, and I liked Linda Gary and Kenneth Mars as the grandparents. However, in correlation to the original, John Ingle's narration, as nice as it was, was somewhat unnecessary, but I was more impressed with his gruff characterisation of Cera's father. All in all, a surprisingly good sequel, though it doesn't surpass the first and the finest. 6/10 Bethany Cox.