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Our pre-schooler loves dinosaurs – brontosauruses in particular – and has worn out every entry in the “Land Before Time” saga (including its short-lived series) over the last year or so. You would imagine he’d be a perfect audience for BABY: SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND, yet I’m going to hold off on a viewing of this early Touchstone release with him until he’s ready for some oddly placed violence which makes an otherwise entertaining African-set adventure unsuitable for what should’ve been its main demographic.
B.W.L. Norton, whose main directorial credits up to that point were the memorable Cornel Wilde TV-movie “Gargoyles” and the uneven “More American Graffiti,” stepped into direct “Baby” after Roger Spottiswoode left the project in pre-production. Working from a Clifford and Ellen Green (“Spacecamp”) screenplay, “Baby” runs the gamut from being a wholesome Disney-esque genre film to an action-packed tale with married couple William Katt and Sean Young uncovering a living Brontosaurus family in the African jungle, and then trying to protect little “Baby” from evil scientist Patrick McGoohan.
“Baby”’s animatronic effects are a mixed bag – the larger dinosaur is well-designed but the expressiveness of the younger “Baby” is stiff -- but what makes the film appealing is the widescreen location cinematography of John Alcott and Jerry Goldsmith’s marvelous score. Goldsmith’s gorgeous, lyrical theme – one of his finest from an especially prolific period of film scoring -- sells the material in a way the story quite can’t do, while Katt (who I always thought should’ve been a bigger star) and Young work well together as the leads. In spite of its flaws, it’s hard not to be emotionally involved by the time the credits roll with Goldsmith’s music welling with emotion.
“Baby” is certainly an odd mix of a “cute,” E.T.-like fantasy with more adult overtones and violence than you’d ordinarily expect in this type of film. There are stabbings, shootings and the slaying of Baby’s father (a la “Bambi”) in a grizzly sequence that, today, would’ve easily netted a PG-13 rating. You have to wonder what was going through Norton’s mind in how these sequences were handled, yet I can’t deny that the film is fun to watch – an old-fashioned jungle adventure with dinosaurs that may have been a breakout smash had it been made with CGI effects in the wake of “Jurassic Park” just a few years later.
As far as the myriad of “E.T.” clones we endured in the ‘80s go, “Baby” is one of the better ones, and Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray sports a Special Edition with revealing new interviews with Katt (15 minutes) and Norton (10 minutes). In fact, Katt’s description of an arduous shoot – complete with crocodiles, insanely humid conditions, a lack of quality food and intermittent power – is even more fun than watching the film. That Katt reflects so fondly on the picture at the same time he divulges the extreme difficulty the crew encountered shooting in Africa speaks to the actor’s graciousness and good humor. Norton’s conversation, by comparison, is more technically oriented as far as the special effects go, and he only mentions in passing that Disney didn’t want Spottiswoode directing the film (one wonders if Spottiswoode, who retained an Executive Producer credit, wanted to push the film even further into “adult territory”). The theatrical trailer is also on-hand.
Visually the disc – due out February 13th -- sports a roughly equivalent transfer to Mill Creek’s prior 1080p (2.35) AVC encode – it’s passable but has clearly been derived from an older master. However, the audio is configured differently, mostly in a good way: Kino Lorber’s release includes both the movie’s preferred 2.0 DTS MA Dolby Stereo mix and a 5.1 DTS MA track that’s too front-heavy by comparison. The Mill Creek disc only housed a strange 4.0 track that was missing center channel information, making the 2.0 mix the most satisfying forum for stereo separation and Jerry’s lovely score.