Reviewing - The Neverland Collection
If Neverland is the second star to the right, Peter Pan is the second star of Disney’s Silver Age after Cinderella. Full of magic and childish wonder, Pan’s adventures are synonymous with the kind of stories Disney has become famous for. More than giving Disney one of their top mascots in Tinkerbell, this series also gave us one of the best animated Disney sequels yet. Admittedly that’s not too extraordinary a claim considering most of Disney’s sequels have stunk...but still. Welcome back to the world of never growing up.
Peter Pan (****1/2)
In which an ant-sized fairy shrugs off taking a bomb to the face
This near-flawless masterpiece shows Disney at its best.
For a place called ‘Neverland’, Peter Pan’s home is one that is firmly rooted in a time-specific culture. The children of 1911 were enchanted with pirates, mermaids, and ‘Cowboys-and-Indians’ games. Today, pirates and mermaids might still ignite the imagination, but I would imagine that a modern Neverland might have superheroes and video-game characteristics instead of traditional fantasy elements. Regardless, I think we can all agree that kids don’t play “Cowboys and Indians” anymore – but we’ll get to that in a minute.
What keeps Neverland immortal isn’t Captain Hook or Mermaid Lagoon – it’s pixie dust. Watching the Darling children soar over moonlit London is just as breathtaking today as it was when this film was released in the 50s. The idea of flying is one that will never get old, and that’s what I think keeps Peter Pan exciting for kids. At what point will lifting up off of your bedroom floor and sailing out your window into the cool evening streets NOT be something that gets you dreaming? The whole sequence of Wendy, Michael, and John flying with Pan and Tinkerbell to Neverland is pure magic. There’s nothing not to like about it.
They say a hero is only as good as his villain, and Captain Hook is one of the best. In many ways he’s the quintessential pirate – sharply dressed, cunning, and completely two-faced. I thought it was neat that Hook and the Darling children’s father were both voiced by the same guy, which is apparently how they did it in the original plays as well. I wonder what the significance of that would be. Is Hook supposed to represent the sort of adulthood that the Darling children fear? Or is it simply to highlight the similarities between the two antagonists? There’s an essay in there somewhere – I can tell. Either way, the scenes where Hook scrambles away from the crocodile are still hilarious to this day. Disney was no newcomer to physical comedy, and they pulled out all the stops to make each encounter with the ‘gator fresh and exciting. Smee is a terrific bumbling sidekick/henchman, and for some reason or other, my wife’s term of endearment for me comes from him. Not sure what to make of that.
We can’t ignore the portrayal of Native Americans in this film. In some ways it’s a far cry from the “Pecos Bill” segment from Disney’s Wartime Era, and in other ways it’s all too similar. What I admire about the portrayal is that the Natives and Peter’s Lost Boys seem to treat each other as equals. Whereas Hook and his pirates are wicked antagonists, the Natives are more like frenemies – friends who you fight with for fun. They’re rivals, but they’re not foes, if that makes sense. That part I thought was pretty fun. On the other hand, the whole “Why Is The Red Man Red” segment is a nightmare of racism. The whole bit makes fun of Native American culture by reducing the group to a series of jokes. It’s a black mark on an otherwise delightful film.
This is a terrific film and a highlight of Disney Animation. Don’t miss it!
Return to Never Land (****)
In which it’s unclear whether pirates or Nazis are the real enemy
I’ve never been more nervous to watch a film, or more relieved at the conclusion.
When I was a kid, we had a modest collection of authentic Disney VHS tapes on a shelf in our basement. They had big vibrantly colourful plastic cases that concealed the black tapes within, and I always loved reading the descriptive text on the back of the case that explained what was going to happen in the movie. This collection was supplemented with several shelves of much less glamourous-looking VHS tapes in simple thin cardstock cases. These were recorded Disney films that my dad had captured with his VCR. Peter Pan II: Return to Neverland was one such film that we had snagged off of satellite television. It was a simple black tape with a white sticker along the side where my dad had scrawled “Peter Pan 2”.
Although I was familiar with Peter Pan and the cast of characters from the 1953 classic, we didn’t actually have a copy of the original anywhere in the house. I’d seen the film on television from time to time, but this Disney sequel was the only physical copy of Pan’s adventures in our home. And I loved it. The story of a little girl who didn’t believe in fairies was so intriguing to me, although I’m not exactly sure what it was that struck me at first about the film. The thing that truly cemented this movie as one of the most important films of my childhood had nothing to do with the film itself, but with a dream.
Snuggled underneath my blue blanket that was sprinkled with cartoon zebras playing hockey, I had a dream one night that Peter Pan and Tinkerbell had found me at my elementary school. With a shot of pixie dust, I rose up off of the cement play area and into the sky. In moments, I was soaring over clouds, doing loops, barrel rolls, and all manner of aerodynamic maneuvers. It was a dream that lasted far longer than dreams normally do, and when I woke up, all I could think about was clouds and Neverland and pixie dust. The simple song “Second Star To The Right”, sung by some off-screen voice, became an enchanting melody that always took me back to that dream. But try as I might, I never had the dream again. Neverland seemed to have been a once-in-a-lifetime trip for me.
Years passed, and the young boy who Pan visited that night grew up. I left my childhood home behind, graduated university, got married, and in the blink of an eye I ended up with a child of my own. Just a few months before, Disney+ had come out, and I knew that this meant I’d get a chance to head back to Neverland to relive the story that I’d fallen in love with as a young boy.
But there was a problem. Actually, there were several.
First of all, Rotten Tomatoes had nothing good to say about my childhood treasure. “With its forgettable songs and lackluster story, this new Pan will surely entertain kids, but will feel more like a retread to adults,” they wrote. It had a 45% critic score and a depressing 38% audience score. Secondly, I could barely remember a thing about the movie. I remembered the song, and I remembered that Jane didn’t believe in fairies, and I remembered Peter seeing Wendy as a grown up – but that’s about it. I didn’t remember much of anything that gave me confidence that the film was as good as it was in my head. Thirdly, I had learned by this time that Disney’s animated sequels had a terrible reputation for being poor representations of their predecessors. By everything that my grown-up mind could see, Return To Neverland was probably a terrible film.
Thus came the conundrum. In my mind and memory, this film was beautiful – nearly flawless. If I watched it again, I’d have the chance to experience that same joy I had as a kid. But if I watched it again, I risked losing everything. If it turned out to be as terrible as the critics said, not only would I have to watch a mediocre film, but my childhood dream would have turned out to be hollow. It almost seemed as though the right call was to never watch the movie again – to preserve it.
But as I began the quest of watching through the entire Disney Animation Studios library, I knew that it meant I’d have to open the door to Neverland once more. And as I moved film-by-film through Disney’s history, Return to Neverland hung in the back of my mind. It wasn’t fear that I felt, and it wasn’t excitement either. I guess it was just hope. Hope that this film would deserve the place in my heart that it held.
By the time the credits rolled, all I felt was relief. This movie rocks, and I’m happy that I’m willing to defend it from anyone who might say otherwise. From the animation to the story to the music, this is probably the best Disney sequel I’ve seen since Lion King 1 ½.
Let’s start with the animation because it’s beautiful. When this film was released, traditional animation was on its way out, but it’s this ‘sunset period’ (as I call it) that gave us some of the most charming and brilliantly coloured 2D animation we’d seen yet. The original characters (Pan, Hook, Tinkerbell) all retain their iconic original designs, and the new characters are just as wonderful in their appearance. Jane’s younger brother Daniel is as cute as a donut, and Jane’s expressions throughout the film perfectly capture the look of someone who feels they’re ‘too old’ for these sort of stories. Grown Wendy reminds me of Julie Andrews in her design, and there’s a certain gravity that she exudes whenever she’s onscreen. She may look different, but she’s every bit the Wendy you remember. The colours and shading are just terrific throughout the film. I’ve always loved the way they make 2D characters ‘pop’ by adjusting the tone of colour on their edges. It might be a personal preference, but I couldn’t imagine a CGI film looking more perfect than this.
What surprised me most about this film was how tolerable the music was. At this point in time, I’ve watched through a few of Disney’s animated sequels, and vast majority of the music is just awful. It’s cheesy and forgettable and often non-diegetic, so it usually feels like a waste of time. But what’s interesting is how in this one case, I actually appreciated the non-diegetic music. The reprise of “Second Star to the Right” instantly won me over (admittedly entirely on the power of nostalgia). The song “I’ll Try” in particular is incredibly poignant, highlighting Jane’s struggle to believe in something in the midst of the horrors of World War II. There’s certainly nothing here that can compare with the music from any original Disney film, but as Disney sequels go, this is up there with the best.
Beyond the animation and music, what I love most about this film is the bold direction they took with the story. Disney may have a reputation for being too sugary-sweet at times, but this movie opens with Wendy’s husband going off to war while Nazi bombs rain down on our protagonist’s neighbourhood. There’s a scene where Jane is navigating war-torn London on her own, having only her dog to protect her. The fight she has with Wendy and Daniel is a great example of how this film isn’t afraid to get ‘real’:
Jane: Faith? Trust? Pixie dust?! Mother, those are just words from your stories. They don’t mean anything! Daniel: Yes they do. Peter Pan says they’ll make you fly. Jane: Daniel, story time is over! (Jane flings open the curtains to show wartime London) Look! It’s a war. Peter Pan isn’t real and people don’t fly!
What I think is so interesting about Jane’s character is that she’s addressing a concern that I’ve heard people express about Disney films. Believing in fairies is all well and good until life hits you in the face, they might say. Jane seems to agree. These stories that Wendy is stuffing her children’s heads with might be fun to talk about, but Jane argues that they’re meaningless in the face of ‘real life’. Now, of course, because this is a movie, Peter Pan is real. But what are we supposed to make of this statement as people living in the real world? Is Jane right? What use is a story like Peter Pan when things go wrong? One answer might be to double down on Jane’s perspective: “She’s right. Belief is useless – what matters are the things that really happen; the things you can see and touch.” But there’s another way to look at Jane’s conundrum, and it’s the one that I think we’re meant to. We’ll get to that in a second.
When Jane gets to Neverland, she declares that she doesn’t believe in fairies. This has a catastrophic effect on Tinkerbell, who begins to literally fade away as the movie progresses. But when Jane realizes what she’s done, she’s heartbroken. She cries next to a faded Tink while a song plays
“I can finally see it. Now I have to believe all those precious stories. All the world is made of faith and trust and pixie dust.”
Jane was getting so bogged down by “real life” that she forgot what it means for something to be “real” in the first place. She equated the bombs and fire of World War II as “real life”, and simultaneously deemed the joy and peace that Peter Pan stories gave her as “childish nonsense”. In rejecting the comfort of family storytime, Jane was subconsciously rejecting a whole universe of unseen realities. We do that sometimes. We treat something like “love” as immaterial and think that something as trivial as a paper cut can somehow be more “real”.
To that end, I think Tinkerbell represents a belief in something beyond what sight and touch and prove. I don’t believe in Tinkerbell, but I believe in faith and trust. I believe in love. I don’t believe in Peter Pan, but I believe in the power of a story. I believe that the immaterial is often so much more important than the material. And I think that’s the lesson that Jane is learning – even though she comes face-to-face with the immaterial in a way that many of us will not.
This movie is about how belief has a power that goes far beyond physicality. Faith and trust are imperceptible to the eye, but they are the forces that keep this world from a very perceptible darkness. And for a Disney animated sequel, that’s big stuff to tackle. For that, I applaud them. And hey, maybe this movie is much dumber than I make it out to be – but I loved it. Sue me.
Jake and the Neverland Pirates (*)
I gave this a shot because it’s traditionally animated and within the world of Peter Pan, but this is the kind of kid’s entertainment that’s SO kiddish that there’s not a thing grown-ups can take away from it. You know how in Dora The Explorer she talks to the audience? That happens here in this show. It’s for very young audiences. And that might not make it a bad show, but it certainly means there’s no reason for me to watch any more of it. I watched ten minutes and moved on.
Yorumlar