Bluth’s second film ‘An American Tale’ (1986), a fable that looked at the European immigration to New York through the eyes of a family of mice and produced by Spielberg, was a much greater financial success, and this in turn led to Spielberg’s suggestion of doing a film reminiscent of ‘Bambi’, but with dinosaurs. The animation was stunning, a mixture of Disney-style character animation and astute naturalism, but the tone was much darker and richer, and while the film didn’t achieve box office success, it was a critical hit and attracted the attention of Steven Spielberg. O’Brien novel, was a significant statement of intent. Their first feature ‘The Secret of NIMH’ (1982), an adaptation of the beloved Robert C. He had been an animation director at Walt Disney Animation in the late 70s, but with the quality of animation in decline and rumours of the studio’s closure, he led a team of animators in exodus from Disney and established their own company. ‘The Land Before Time’ was the third animated feature from director Don Bluth, one of the unsung pioneers of animation in the last decades of the twentieth century. This film about a bunch of cute dinosaurs was subtly complex, emotionally rich and deeply moving in a way almost no other animated film had managed to be before or since. I found myself heaving with sobs, my heart aching. As an adult revisiting the film after many years though, I was stunned. As a kid, I wasn’t aware of how dense the emotional content was, though it certainly affected me. The easy explanation for this is that in the years before ‘Jurassic Park’, the only dinosaur-themed films we had as kids were this and the Rite of Spring sequence from ‘Fantasia’. I was barely two years old when it came out, and along with the Disney classic ‘Alice in Wonderland’, it was one of the VHS tapes that dominated my childhood.

I don’t remember a world without ‘The Land Before Time’. It might look quaint and approachable, but its emotional scope is staggering, and after three decades, the punch it delivers has only gotten stronger. For another, it may be one of the most poignant and honest expressions on grief and death in the history of cinema. For one thing, it’s a masterpiece - a flawed one, but a masterpiece nonetheless. The truth is that ‘The Land Before Time’ is not that kind of film at all.

Animation has changed a lot in the past 30 years, and so you’d forgive them for seeing the animation style and assuming what kind of film it is. So when Don Bluth’s 1988 animated film ‘The Land Before Time’ arrived on Netflix earlier this year, I wondered how many parents would see this film with its cute dinosaur characters, and unsuspectingly sit their young ones down and turn it on, expecting some lighthearted and 'safe' entertainment. Perhaps as we have stepped into this new century, we’ve become too protective of children and their experiences, wanting to hold back their innocence and shield them from the harshness of what awaits them through adolescence and adulthood. Of course there are examples (especially in the early days of Disney Animation), but for every ‘Pinocchio’ or ‘Inside Out’ or ‘A Monster Calls’, there are countless derivative and forgettable cinematic confectionaries, as digestible as they are forgettable, and this seems such a pity, as the truly great children’s films prove that you can impart great wisdom and insight to the very young, often on difficult subjects, through the gentleness of storytelling. Form, function and enjoyment have walked hand-in-hand, especially in the finer works, but this conceit has never seemed to take on in children's films. Fairytales are the obvious example of this, but children's literature today has continued this tradition, from the 'Harry Potter' novels to Philip Pullman’s 'His Dark Materials' series. From their earliest origins, stories for children were intended not just as entertainment, but as a way of imparting lessons and preparing them for the complexities of adulthood.

Ducky land before time yep yep yep