May. 09, 2002 - 11:03 pm
man, i didn't realize that these Disney movies were so short! only 76 minutes. i was looking through my sister's collection upstairs. ever since I watched Mrs. Miniver (1942) the other day I've been wanting to know the entire story of Alice In Wonderland. (Mrs. Miniver reads the end of the story to her children while they are being bombed by the Germans.) unfortunately my sister's copy of Alice was still in its original packaging...and you know what that means... i also noticed that she has The Black Cauldron (1985), which i love because it is by far the scariest Disney movie ever. and the sword plays a song when Taran swings it. but this was also sealed. so i looked at the rest and this was the movie that i remembered the least of - so i chose to watch it.
i think this calls for a 7/10. it was a good kids movie. too short for me though. it needed more character development. i did very much enjoy all the subjective p.o.v. "shooting" that was done with the "camera." (i'm not very up on the phraseology for animation, so i'll just stick to what i know here.) i think that makes us get a lot more involved in the story.
a few qualms i had were the treatment of the Indians here. i know that might sound stupid, but remember our kids are supposed to be watching this and they're GOING to learn something from it whether we like it or not. first of all the "redskins" are actually red. which is just wrong. and they are very stereotypical. whooping, tomahawks, "how", dancing around a fire...the whole bit. and the supposed head of the tribe, Tiger Lily, doesn't even speak! a couple of redeeming factors in this dream world of Neverland are the two very strong female characters, Wendy and Tinkerbell (who doesn't speak and is very attractive, but she's a fighter no less).
the bad thing is that every girl in this film is in love with Peter. and i just think there's something wrong there. i don't know. maybe i'm taking too much of a feminist view of this film. i'll stop now. i really liked the way the lost boys wore animal costumes, but that's not getting it anything higher than a 7.