Ah, God bless the Disney corporation, a company so hell-bent on making a quick buck that they’re willing to bastardize their own classics with cheap “sequels.” It started innocently enough: two small direct-to-video follow-ups to “Aladdin” that proved successful. The films were both relatively enjoyable and made Disney a huge prophet. Suddenly, their long-time rule against making sequels to animated hits was voided and almost immediately Disney began rolling out low-budget direct-to-video sequels to all of their 1990s blockbusters. “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “Pocahontas” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” were among the victims.
But then something horrible happened: they ran out of new films and decided to begin raping their library of animated “masterpieces.” The words “happily ever after” no longer meant anything — characters like Dumbo and Cinderella were subject to new adventures after years of piece and solitude, and the results were pitiful.
But if there was a positive to the “direct-to-video” line, it was that the films did go direct to video. Really, they were videos that catered to a very large, but specific market — little kids who were easily bored and required new movies frequently. Disney could crank ’em out, parents would buy them and their kids would play them endlessly until they got tired, right around the time the next film came out. To most animation buffs over the age of 10, they were less than a blip on the radar, a moneymaker for Disney that they could easily ignore.
Sadly the straight to video route was not enough for this Disney Corporation. In the past few years they’ve experimented with releasing smaller films in the spring such as “A Goofy Movie” and “A Tigger Movie” to capitalize on the lack of quality films released in the early months of the year. Much less expensive than Disney’s bigger summer or holiday animated releases, the new films gave parents something to take their kids to on weekends and one of the world’s richest corporations yet another film to merchandise.
So, this year Disney has decided to whore out “Peter Pan” with “Return to Neverland,” a barely-over-an-hour film that Disney hopes will not only sell tickets but also help sell copies of the original “Peter Pan,” newly released on DVD.
The story of “Return” is amazingly thin. London is at war and Wendy, from the original story, is all grownup. Her daughter Jane doesn’t believe her stories of a so-called “Neverland” and tries her hardest to act mature beyond her years. That is until Jane is kidnapped by Captain Hook and his pirate crew and taken to Neverland. Of course, she is saved by Peter and taken to his hide-away, where he lives with the lost boys and Tinkerbell.
Of course, Jane isn’t buying any of this. And she tries to make a deal with Hook to get her off the island (she doesn’t have enough faith or trust to fly by herself) and she attempts to help him recover his treasure. That is, unless Peter Pan and his lost boys can show Jane just how much fun not growing up can be.
To the film’s credit, while the plot is amazingly thin, there are a few sequences that save the film from being a total waist of celluloid. The opening sequence in a war-torn London is surprisingly well-staged and the inevitable reunion between Peter and Wendy at the end is actually pretty touching. The film’s body set in Neverland isn’t anything special, but the vast majority of the kids in the audience seemed to enjoy it. And really, I guess that’s what matters in the end.
As a life-long Disney fan I would have preferred Disney leave well enough alone and allow the Pan saga to have ended where it once did, but this film isn’t quite as bad as it could have been. While this will never be a classic, it seems to entertain younger children, so perhaps it’s successful in that regard. If you’re an animation buff I recommend holding out for Disney’s annual major outing “Lilo ‘ Stitch” this June, but if you must see this film, you’ll be relieved to know it’s not the disastrous bastardization of a childhood favorite it could be. C
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