Western Animation / Dinosaur Adventure

One of the original German DVD covers.

Dinosaur Adventure (Im Land der Dinosaurier) is a 2000 animated film created by the infamous German mockbuster studio Dingo Pictures. In prehistoric times, a young dinosaur named Tio lives with his parents and spends his days playing with his best friend Kree, a mischievous, wisecracking pterosaur. Tio's temperamental father, however, vitriolically disapproves of his son's friendship with Kree and attempts to separate the two by enrolling Tio into a school helmed by Oro, an eccentric elderly dinosaur with a loudly-emphasized passion for science. While demonstrating one of his inventions to his class, said invention registers seismic activity foretelling an imminent volcanic eruption. Following Oro's failed attempt to forewarn the other dinosaurs of the cataclysm, Tio slips away from his parents to confidentially reunite with Kree minutes before the anticipated eruption actually occurs, forcing the duo to seek refuge in a cave and separating Tio from his parents. After the eruption's dissipation, the pair emerge onto a ruined landscape, and, accompanied by Oro, set out to reunite Tio with his parents.

The film's origins come from the release of Disney's Dinosaur, with a little bit of The Land Before Time mixed in. The latter is more apparent in the PS1 and PS2 releases of the film by Midas Interactive and Phoenix Films, which use alternate box art designed to mimic the aesthetics of Don Bluth. The movie has been released under many different titles, in its home market and abroad.

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This animation contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Most of Tio's dad's lines are yelling at or scolding Tio.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Kree's catchphrase "Mammoth mayhem!"
• Anachronism Stew: The infamous line "Science has made progress - one day we'll all be able to fly" is based on the modern theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs. This was first theorized in the 1800s, and dinosaurs themselves would obviously have no way of knowing about it, adding to the fact that birds already existed by the late Cretaceous when the film is (presumably?) set.
• Anachronistic Animal: Gorillas, crows, monkeys and antelopes appear, despite not evolving until millions of years after the dinosaurs went extinct. It's also worth nothing that the narrator is a duck; while waterfowl really did coexist with non-avian dinosaurs, the narrator looks far more like a modern duck than any such bird that existed back then. Kree's "mammoth mayhem" catchphrase implies that he knows what mammoths are, even though no such animals should exist yet.
• Artistic License – Biology: Tio is a T. rex-ish thing with a red button nose and is apparently the child of two sauropods. Also, meat eating is treated as cannibalism, which suffice to say is quite face-palming for everyone who even remotely knows what dinosaurs are.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: Absolutely everything. With her cartoon dog nose and round ears, Fa looks more like a reject from PB&J Otter. Then there's Peek, who is apparently an Ankylosaurus but looks more like one of those cheap plastic dinosaurs made in China that you get in a bag at the dollar store. Kree is supposed to be a pterosaur, but he looks more like a cross between a bird and a bat. There's also what looks like an orange frog-chameleon-therizinosaur thing.◊ And then there's Tio's parents, who look like quadrupedal sauropods while Tio looks like a bipedal Tyrannosaurus rex. Then they have a second child (named Tio the Second) who looks exactly like Tio. Ironically, the theropod-looking dinosaur Oro (who is supposed to be an Orodromeus, hence his name) appears to have fuzzy integument analogous to feathers, and he makes possible reference to the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds in one of his lines.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: Some herbivorous dinosaurs turn to eating meat after the eruption.
• Cannibal Clan: Tio, Oro and Kree come across some of the dinosaurs who'd survived the eruption. As there isn't enough grass and leaves to eat (as the area was destroyed by a volcano), the dinos have resorted to eating meat. Argh says that they get stronger every day eating meat, much to the good guys' horror.
• Captain Ersatz: Kree, who strongly resembles Petrie from The Land Before Time.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover of the Midas Interactive and Phoenix Films releases feature three characters that do not appear in it - one that resembles Littlefoot, one that resembles Ducky, and one that looks like a fusion of Cera and Spike. The original German covers used random drawn art of dinosaurs, none of which appear in the film at all.
• Dead Guy Junior: Once Tio and company make it to the place where the rest of the dinosaurs fled, Tio finds that his parents had a second son, who was named Tio II, after his "deceased" brother.
• Delivery Stork: Because Kree thinks that Tio's father is making too much of a fuss about the birth of his son, he sarcastically says that this egg would be the first one ever laid by a dinosaur and that young dinosaurs have so far been brought by storks.
• A Dog Named "Cat": The gorilla leader is named Dragon.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Peek the Ankylosaurus is frequently considered an annoyance and often told by the other members of the cast to keep quiet, due to his tendency to sing in rhyme instead of speak normally.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Some of the dinosaurs that survived the eruption couldn't find plants, so they resorted to eating other dinosaurs.
• Informed Species: Oro is allegedly an Orodromaeus, which in reality was a slender, ostrich-like herbivore as opposed to the bizarre-looking Iguanodon/Godzilla-looking creature Oro is. Same goes for Peek, who is supposedly an Ankylosaurus, though he looks more like a spiky green bulldog with a beak.
• Jerkass:
  • Peek, especially towards Tio. Even when Tio almost dies from his fall and almost gives up on trying to find his parents upon seeing his new brother, Peek teases him about it. Oro calls him out on this.
    "PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! Don't be such rubbish! We all have siblings, and out parents love us more!"
  • Kree, who seems to be able to get away with repeatedly insulting the other dinosaurs, threatening to assault Peek the next time he's in a dark corner and being really... creepy towards the younger characters.
• Large Ham:
  • Oro.
    "'Ooouhhh Arg, you're as stupid as you always were! Haven't you LEARNED ANYTHING?! SCIENCE HAS MADE PROGRESS! One day we'll all be able to fly!"
  • Also:
    "You're in the waaaaay, Peeeeeeeeek! Move over to the siiiiiiiiiiide!"
• Larynx Dissonance:
  • It's incredibly obvious that Fa's uncle Argh is voiced by a woman.
  • Dragon, the alpha-male of the gorillas is voiced by the same woman using a very goofy voice.
• Lazily Gender-Flipped Name: Tio's mother states that they were planning on having a daughter named "Tia", and so just flipped the name when they realized they had a son.
• Obligatory Swearing: The movie has random swear words tossed into the dialog despite being targeted to very young children. Kree threatens to give Peek a "damn good beating" and one of the more memetic examples comes from Tio's Dad shouting "What the hell is going on here?!"
• Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: All of Tio's friends and relatives survive. Everyone else is killed by the volcano, becomes a carnivore, or is eaten by the carnivores.
• Perpetual Smiler: Peek only ever frowns once. Even after surviving a heavy volcano eruption that turns half of the survivors into (basically) cannibals, he's still smiling.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: Argh. He only appears in two scenes and despite becoming leader of the carnivores, he never tries to attack or eat the protagonists. The worst he does is to tell them to get lost. Then after the protagonists move on, Argh and the carnivores are never mentioned again.
• Replacement Goldfish: Tio's parents gave up on finding out if Tio was alive or not and had another child who they named Tio the Second.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Peek has this as his only character trait.
• Say My Name: Happens twice.
  • First time, when Tio's father sees his son almost die from a fall.
  "TIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
  • Second, when Oro hears Peek teasing Tio about his parents possibly abandoning him.
  "PEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! Don't be such rubbish!"
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The movie starts with an 80s-style industrial electronica/synthpop track, which is about the most inexplicable music choice you could have in a movie involving dinosaurs.
• Temper-Ceratops: The closest thing to an antagonist is Argh, an aggressive ceratopsian randomly antagonising other dinosaurs. When a volcanic eruption destroys most plant life, he actually leads them to cannibalism, which takes this trope to a whole new level. His niece Faa also looks like an otter for some reason.
• Unnamed Parent: Tio's parents names are not revealed.
• Vocal Dissonance:
  • Tio II (a toddler!) is obviously voiced by a grown man.
  • Arg is voiced by a woman, as is Dragon, the male leader of the gorilla tribe.

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