THE PLOT THUS FAR
The daughter of a Native American tribe chief and English soldier share a romance when English colonists invade 17th century Virginia. The sequel follows the English taking back an underage girl to show off to England.
WHAT WE THOUGHT
Pocahontas is shown as a young woman and not a girl, who is adventurous in her own way though at first distant and even fearful. But she accepts contact rather easily and she introduces John Smith to her grand mother Willow, a willow that speaks and gives advice. This meeting of John Smith and Pocahontas is amplified by the meeting of Pocahontas’ raccoon and Ratcliffe’s pampered dog. This is both charming and funny, how the savage raccoon is so much apter to survive any kind of trouble coming from a civilized dog than the reverse. The third animal here is a humming bird who is the jester of the triad.
There are also plenty of songs; they aren’t bad but I couldn’t help feeling that they held up the action a little too much at times. As well as the human characters who provide the drama there are also three animals who provide the comedy relief; these are a raccoon and a hummingbird that are friends of Pocahontas and a dog that belongs to Ratcliffe… I initially feared that these creatures would be irritating but actually they were pretty funny and I suspect they will be firm favourites with younger viewers. The story is hardly complex but one can’t really expect it to be in a story aimed at children; given that I was surprised when one character was killed; it was necessary for the story though and there was no blood shown so it is unlikely to disturb even the most timid of children.
What can we say about the DTV sequel? I feel it’s a matter of not even addressing it. Just consider it to be a really long extra included on the release. The animation is awful, the story is barely there and it only diminishes the impact of the original film. Praise be to John Lasseter for helping to turn around animation at the House of Mouse. For those are still curious about the flick. Imagine the worst parts of “The New World” by way of “Pretty Woman” minus the horse-faced prostitute.
The Blu-Ray comes with both films and a bevy of special features. You get featurettes, a look at the short that inspired the movie, a deleted song, deleted scenes, audio commentary and DVD copies of both films. The A/V Quality is another example of what happened with The Rescuers. The weaker elements became magnified under the 1080p transfer. However, the DTS-HD 5.1 master audio track was cleaner than my memories of the theatrical exhibition. Therefore, I have to recommend this release for a purchase.
RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW!
