 |
| Can someone get this movie a blanket? |
Directed by: Tom Ellery, Bradley Raymond
Produced by: Leslie Hough
Written by: Allen Estrin, Cindy Marcus, Flip Kobler
Budget: I couldn't find any information about this movie's budget anywhere online.
Starring: Irene Bedard, Billy Zane, Jim Cummings, Donal Gibson, David Ogden Stiers, Linda Hunt, Jean Stapleton, Russell Means, Finola Hughes, Brad Garrett
Some time after the events of the first movie, Pocahontas hears rumors that John Smith has died. When a John Smith replacement arrives, he whisks Pocahontas back across the sea, where everything ends up far happier than it does in reality.
Between 1994 and 2011, Disney produced and released roughly 49 direct-to-video movies. The vast, vast majority of these were sequels to theatrical Disney releases both recent and classic, including Mulan, several Aladdin follow-ups, and a sequel to Bambi where the titular character murders a lodge full of hunters after noticing his mother's head mounted on their wall (that may not have actually happened, I haven't seen it). At best these were accepted and forgotten about, and at worst they were regarded as the trash they were and destined for landfills or given to the least favorite child as a birthday gift.
The first Pocahontas movie was at least a Disney animated classic. This one? Not so much, despite its half-assed attempts to call back to the best parts of the first.
The History
Would you have guessed this movie isn't historically accurate?
The Bad
The animation has taken a serious hit, more so than you might think from a straight to video sequel. Grandmother Willow in particular looks really, really bad...as in bad Photoshop masking bad. The actual motion of the characters is jerky and lacks that fluidity that earned Disney a name in the 90s. When characters speak the animations are over-the-top in a way that reminds me of the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings, where everyone gesticulated wildly. The background characters don't move at all, and at points it looks like the animators forgot to replace their stand-in models. There's an extended sword fight/action scene towards the end, and it's best described as tepid.
The characters have been reduced to their roles, rather than actual characters. Pocahontas is a spunky girl hero, the animals are groan-inducing "comic" relief, and that's pretty much it. This is just emphasized by the awful voice acting from pretty much everyone involved. Bedard obviously has no interest in this, as her Pocahontas sounds like she's on downers throughout the entire thing. Zane plays Rolfe as a goofy, cock-sure diplomat that with some of the most annoying "quips" put to script. The animals make all the necessary chattering noises when appropriate.
Hey, you remember how the songs in the original Pocahontas were woven into the plot and served to describe and elaborate character motivations? How "Colors of the Wind" reinforced the movie's emphasis on nature, how "Just Around the Riverbend" foreshadowed Pocahontas finding some meaning in a cause? Well all that metaphor has been replaced by characters singing about what they see and telling the audience how they feel.
For a movie that's only 72 minutes long, there sure is a lot of filler. Long dance scenes, comedy bits, and animations that feel like they're going on longer than they should just to use up time. It makes the movie feel like it was stretched out from a 44-minute TV special to a full-length movie.
I'm not going to talk much about whether this movie is "problematic" in its portrayal of various cultures and how they interact because I'm not really qualified to speak on that. Suffice to say, it handles it with all the sensitivity and tact that a 90's straight-to-video sequel possesses.
The Rest
I don't know what else I can really say about this. If you've seen one Disney sequel you've pretty much seen them all.
Should You Watch It?
No.
No comments:
Post a Comment