Dissecting the Disquels: (Peter Pan 2) Return to Neverland

Plot: Wendy has grown up and now has children of her own; a daughter named Jane and an infant son named Danny. She raised them on the stories of Peter Pan and everyone seemed to love them.

However, when Wendy’s husband is sent to fight in the war, Jane is told that she needs to take care of the family until he comes back. Taking the promise with utmost seriousness, Jane puts aside childish stories of Peter Pan and Neverland in lieu of responsibility and lists. Her mother and brother try to retain her childhood, but it’s not until Peter Pan himself intervenes that Jane truly sees the light.

Breakdown: Okay, here’s the deal….I never much paid attention to Peter Pan. It was just one of those movies that never caught my interest for some reason. Even the Peter Pan segment in Kingdom Hearts, one of my favorite games ever, just didn’t appeal to me. I don’t know exactly why as there’s nothing inherently wrong with the franchise outside of the little brat Tinkerbell, but eh. Let’s see if the sequel can spark some Peter Pan excitement in me.

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We start off with a pretty cool opening as we see Tinkerbell flying through the clouds creating silhouettes of all of the Peter Pan characters, and eventually we see the actual Peter Pan on a ship in the sky.

This movie takes place in the future (future as far as the last movie is concerned anyway) where Wendy is now an adult, but is still always believing in Peter Pan. Wendy now has a family of her own, and her daughter, Jane, takes the reins this time around.

I would fault this for being yet another Disquel that relies on the main character from the first movie’s child possibly rehashing the experiences of the last movie, but according to what I’ve read, Jane is actually a legitimate character in the Peter Pan books, though not thoroughly explored in the books, apparently.

In addition, this is a reversal on Wendy’s character. Whereas Wendy was about doing all that she could to enjoy her childhood and not grow up, Jane is all about putting aside childish things and trying her best to grow up. And….yeah, reversals of the parents’ story is also a Disquel thing. Lady and the Tramp 2, The Little Mermaid 2, The Lion King 2, to a lesser extent.

As we get our first song of the movie, we also get our title screen. It should be noted that this movie isn’t technically Peter Pan 2 – it’s Peter Pan IN Return to Neverland, according to the title. So…is Peter a side character in his own franchise now? Well, I guess considering Tinkerbell’s little series doesn’t seem to include him, people must only want everyone but Peter Pan.

The song by the way, is ‘The Second Star to the Right’, a remake of a song from the original, and it’s pretty nice.

Our story begins in England in the….midst of World War II…..I’m sorry, this is one of the more light-hearted and non-serious movie franchises under Disney, right? World War II? In Peter Pan? That’s like seeing Donald Duck in Nazi German–

………Oh…..well then…..*cough*….Carry on.

Jane’s father is sent off to fight in the war and leaves Jane to protect her mom and baby brother while he’s away.

Aw now, don’t be sad, Jane. Everyone knows only mothers die in Disney movies.

…..Okay, there are rare occasions, but usually no.

We cut through some time and see the town in shambles as children are being evacuated to the countryside to help keep them safe. I commend Disney for a bit here, because that’s actually historically accurate.

We see Jane wandering around the rubble with her dog, and it’s both narrated and implied by dialogue that Jane has lost sight of the fun of being a kid in such harsh times. I-…I’m sorry; is this a character flaw? It is World War freakin’ II, and she has been tasked by her father to take care of her mother and infant brother. I think she has every right in the world to be focused more on survival than hopscotch.

Back home, Wendy takes Danny into the bomb shelter after air raid sirens go off. He’s scared, but she comforts him by saying the bomb sounds are more like cannonfire from pirate ships, just like Captain Hook, and Danny dons a Peter Pan hat to play pretend.

We cut back to Jane and the dog who are trying to get back home, but the dog nearly gets caught up in a bomb blast…♫ Think of the happiest things, it’s the same as having wings, take the path the moonbeams make, if the moon is still awake, you’ll see him wink his eye, you can fly, you can fly, you can fly…..if you get hit with an air strike……..♫

Jane saves the dog in the nick of time, and makes it back home.

The item she was retrieving was a gift for Danny’s birthday; a pair of socks, which Danny dislikes and Wendy responds awkwardly as being ‘practical’…..I’d say socks, even mismatched, during World War II would be a pretty nice gift actually. In order to make the gift more interesting to Danny, she uses the socks as hand puppets and pretends that they’re Peter Pan and Captain Hoo—is Wendy obsessed?

Every single time that she’s been on screen so far it involves her doing something Peter Pan related. She made a Peter Pan doll for Jane, she made a Peter Pan hat for Danny, and it seems like whenever something happens she just makes it better by bringing up Peter Pan. There’s nothing wrong with that, but she still seems very personally fixated.

As Jane listens to the radio for news and ideas for supplies that they might need, Wen—Holy crap, Jane has way better handwriting than I do. Geez. She’s like, what, eight? I write like a coke addict in an earthquake and she’s basically a teacher in calligraphy.

Wendy tells Danny the story of Peter Pan stealing treasure from Captain Hook just for kicks, and that somehow makes him a hero or something. Jane starts to listen to the story with a smile, but once it’s over she puts her headphones back on and brushes it off as BS.

Again, I don’t really blame her. Even if she is still at an age where she may still believe those stories, it’s incredibly hard to believe stories of magic flying unaging children and pixie dust when, again, you’re in the midst of World War freakin’ II.

The air raid ends and they go back inside. Jane chastises Wendy for filling Danny’s head with silly stories, and Wendy tries to reply but a knock at the door stops her. As Jane carries Danny to bed, Wendy meets with an old soldier at the door who says her children are to be evacuated in the morning. Wendy’s shocked as she hadn’t even been able to tell them that the evacuations were even happening, but accepts the soldier’s message.

Wendy tells Jane about the evacuation, but Jane vehemently refuses to go both because she simply doesn’t want to leave and because she promised her father that she’d protect both Danny and her mother. Wendy asks Jane to promise to protect Danny and keep telling him stories about Peter Pan because he needs them to cope, but Jane flips out and says that faith, trust and pixie dust are all nonsense. Danny comes into the room and disagrees with his sister, but she points out the reality of the world they’re living in and how believing in that stuff is foolish.

Danny then runs off in frustration while Wendy scolds Jane for speaking to Danny like that. She tells her that she thinks she’s mature, but she has a lot to learn.

Here’s where I’ll give some leeway into this being a flaw with Jane. It’s perfectly normal for her to wish to give up ‘childish’ things like playing and listening to fairy tales since she has put the weight of her family on her shoulders, forcing her into adulthood. But she’s also trying to rob Danny of having a childhood at all when he’s barely out of diapers.

It’s obvious to her that these Peter Pan stories do offer him comfort and help keep him and Wendy sane and happy during these tough times. It’s counter-intuitive to try and rip that from him for no reason. There’s nothing he can do to help himself right now. He’s too young to do anything useful. Keeping him safe, fed, watered and clothed doesn’t require taking away his happiness. Look at Grave of the Fireflies.

Jane is likely just taking everything too far, but she is doing it in a realistic way.

This still holds the problem of it being too much of a character flaw in Jane. The only reason that Danny and Wendy are seen as the more, for lack of a better word, ‘rational’ ones here is because we know that Peter Pan, the lost boys, Captain Hook and pixies are all real. But even knowing that they are….she still has a point!

If magic, Peter Pan and pixie dust exist, it’s difficult to believe that they do given that they live in a war zone. I also understand that the real point is to not let reality rob you of your inner child and that tiny part of you that believes in magic in some form, but that’s a hard message to sell when the reality that is robbing you is World War freakin’ II.

Sure, it was harsh to tell a three-year-old that all that stuff wasn’t real in lieu of forcing him to face the harsh realities of war; that’s probably within the realm of telling a kid that Santa’s not real and pointing out that they live in a third world country, but it’s not like it’s entirely unreasonable for her to have such an outburst.

We then get our next song, ‘I’ll Try’, and it’s actually really good. One of the best I’ve heard from any of the Disquels. And it’s actually a pretty good standalone song even if some of lyrics seem silly out of context. It’s basically about what we already know; that Jane feels heavy responsibility on her shoulders to take care of the family and she doesn’t have time to believe in magic and Peter Pan, but she tries and wants to believe. It’s just hard to since she can’t ignore everything that’s going on around her.

The pirates and Captain Hook arrive at Wendy’s house and mistakenly kidnap Jane thinking that she’s Wendy. They put her in a sack and cause all sorts of damage across London in their bleh-y CGI ship before heading to Neverland.

When the pirates get back on the water, they hold Jane in a sack over the water and lure a giant octopus to her location. Apparently, this octopus is our replacement for the crocodile with the clock in its stomach. It’s shtick is the same thing, constantly tormenting Hook, only with the sound of rhythmically popping suction cups instead of a clock ticking. There’s really no reason for the octopus to be making those sounds other than to be a rip-off of the crocodile, who actually had a purpose in making the clock ticking noises.

The reason he was afraid of the croc was because he took Hook’s hand. The reason the croc kept following him was because he ate his hand, liked the taste of his blood and flesh and decided to pursue him in hopes of eating him completely. The croc also ate a clock, and the ticking sound scared the hell out of Hook because he knew the sound indicated the croc was nearby.

The reason he’s afraid of the octopus later on and is freaked out by the popping noises? Because Tinkerbell drops the octopus on Hook’s head, he ends up in its mouth, but escapes without harm. The octopus develops a taste for him so I guess he chases him everywhere….Well okay. I think I’ve delved too far into anime culture to be comfortable with this, but okay. Where did the croc go? Did it die?

Anyway, Peter Pan shows up to save the day, finally. It’s 20 minutes in for God’s sake. He saves Jane from the octopus, and Tinkerbell drops the octopus on Hook. The octopus tries to drag Hook underwater to eat him, but he gets saved by his crew.

Peter brings Jane over to a nearby rock and frees her from the bag to realize that she’s not actually Wendy – she’s her daughter. Jane initially doesn’t believe what’s happening and thinks it’s merely a dream. Hook’s crew starts firing cannons at them, so Peter escapes with Jane through Neverland.

They have some fun flying around, with Tinkerbell being a bitch as per usual (How exactly does she end up with a bunch of shorts and her own spin-off movie?), and they eventually reach Peter’s house to meet the Lost Boys. Peter then proclaims that Jane will stay with them forever, be their mother and read them stories. Yeah, they’re still doing that.

The kids want to play games and screw around, but Jane declines, despite the fact that the youngest boy reminds her of Danny. She says she has to leave and walks away. Peter then points out that she acts like a grownup to which the Lost Boys reply ‘Eww’. I understand this because, again, that’s another point of Neverland, but were they looking for a mother that acted like a kid too?

We get more Hook and Octopus shenanigans where Hook actually states that he was finally rid of the croc and now this is happening. I decided to look this up and surprise surprise, there is no reason for what happened to the croc beyond Hook ‘losing’ him somewhere between movies one and two.

I can imagine that they flat out didn’t want the croc to make a reappearance because of the fact that it ate Hook’s hand was probably deemed as too scary in this day and age, so they replaced it with a silly octopus. Though apparently the croc, known as Tick-Tock, later makes an appearance in the DISNEY JUNIOR show, Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Yeah, this thing is seemingly too violent for a Disquel set in England during WWII, but shove it into a Disney Junior show, that’s much better.

The point is that Hook is going after Peter again.

Peter spots Jane trying to head home on a homemade raft she must’ve made in ten minutes. She says she needs to go home and make things right with her brother and mother for saying Peter didn’t exist when he does. Oh, I guess she doesn’t think this is a dream anymore.

Despite Peter stating that she won’t be able to get home in such a manner, Jane says she has to try anyway and bids Peter goodbye. However, Jane sucks at raft building and the raft sinks before she even gets ten feet out. Peter explains that the only way out of Neverland is to fly, and he’s willing to show her how.

Back at Peter Pan’s Uninsured Flight School, Peter and the others are trying to teach Jane to fly, but she doesn’t believe that she can. Peter says all she needs to fly is faith, trust and pixie dust, but Tinkerbitch, of course, doesn’t want to give her any. Peter persuades her into doing so by taunting that if Jane doesn’t learn how to fly, she’ll be stuck in Neverland forever and have to live with them.

So, Tinkerbell responds by assaulting Jane with a sack of pixie dust. Nice. But she does get comeuppance when she sneezes from so much dust and sends Tink flying around bouncing all over everything.

Jane fails in flying and slams into the ground. I guess Neverland basically gives you cartoon physics because Jane makes a human shaped crater in the ground and comes out perfectly fine.

As she gets out of the hole, Peter notices a list Jane made earlier and explains it’s stuff like that that makes her unable to fly.

They play keepaway with her notebook, which accidentally ends up getting eaten by one of the Lost Boys. They laugh about it, but Jane has a fit yelling at them, calling them children, saying she doesn’t believe in them, and when Tink starts being annoying again she adds that she especially doesn’t believe in fairies.

Jane, you can’t really say that anymore. Call them children, sure. But you are seeing and experiencing Neverland, Peter Pan and fairies. You flew through a rainbow earlier. I’m pretty sure the time for ‘I don’t believe’ is long since passed.

Jane leaves, but Peter and the others seem glad to be rid of her due to her outburst. After she leaves, Tinkerbell falls ill and you can already tell it’s because of Jane’s comment about not believing in fairies. By the way, why is it called pixie dust if she’s a fairy and not a pixie?

Jane tries to camp outside, ending up taking shelter in a small cave in the rain as we get a clip show of times she spent with her family, specifically the time when her father asked her to take care of Danny and her mother. While this isn’t particularly needed, it does showcase why it’s easier to sympathize with Jane each and every time.

Besides the whole World War Freakin’ II stuff, she also feels a heavy burden on her shoulders and responsibility to her dad, and when she tries to be responsible people just roll their eyes and talk about fairies or they screw around and mock her. I’d be frustrated too.

She shouldn’t dedicate her life to being a stick in the mud but WORLD WAR—You get the picture. Even if Peter Pan and the others have been proven as real beyond any shadow of a doubt, it doesn’t change how she feels about her promise nor the status of things back home.

Back with Tinkerbell, they confirm my suspicions and say that Tink’s light will go out if Jane doesn’t start believing in fairies…..No idea why. Millions of kids probably don’t believe in fairies, why is Jane the case that makes Tink terminally ill? Because she’s the only one in Neverland who doesn’t believe? Because she said it to her face?

Peter believes the only way to make Jane believe in fairies is to make her one of them; A Lost Girl.

Cut back to Jane where she hears Hook crying. She smartly takes his sword from the ground and threatens him with it before asking what’s wrong. He claims he lives in the real world and misses his mother. He can take his ship and leave to the real world to reunite with her, but Peter Pan has his treasure and his crew would mutiny if he went off without it.

He’s obviously lying, but Hook tricks her into agreeing to getting back his treasure from Peter with the promise that she will be able to go with him on his ship back home. He even signs a contract stating that he will not harm Peter, and she agrees as long as the treasure’s rightfully his….Well, of course it’s not rightfully his. HE. ARE. PIRATE. When pirates have treasure, chances are they stole it from someone.

Peter, Jane and the Lost Boys reunite, and Peter apologizes to Jane for ruining her notebook. However, they want to make it up to her by turning her into one of them. She suggests they play Treasure Hunt, and Peter agrees, but only on the condition that she acts like a Lost Boy.

We get our next song, ‘These are the Things We Lost Boys Do,’ which is…alright. It’s not particularly bad, but I don’t really enjoy it much. It’s also the only song that’s actually sung by the characters as opposed to merely being played over regular footage.

Throughout the song, Jane just starts having fun with all the shenanigans she and the boys are getting into, and she eventually stumbles upon the treasure chest. She debates calling Hook with the whistle that he gave her, but ultimately throws the whistle away. Peter finds her with the treasure and congratulates her on winning the game by dubbing her the first official Lost Girl.

The Wiki page for Jane also confirms that she is the first and only Lost Girl on record (Supposedly because Lost Boys were made up of boys who fell out of their prams when the nurse was looking the other way. If the boys were not claimed within seven days, Peter would take them to Neverland. Girls do not become lost because, as Peter puts it, girls are ‘Too clever’ to fall out of their prams.)

They cheer, give her an honorary….wolf (?) hat like the other boys all have animal outfits and reprise the song about Lost Boys.

Then, uh oh, one of the Lost Boys finds the whistle in the water and blows it, instantly calling Hook to the scene to capture Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

He thanks Jane for her assistance, outing her actions to Peter, who calls her a traitor and tells her that Tink’s light is going out because of her not believing in fairies….Uhhhh, it was stated in the beginning that Peter steals from Hook and hides his treasure for no good reason besides to have fun as Hook pursues him. If it’s just a big game to him, how is she a traitor for telling him the location of the treasure? It takes away the fun, sure, but Peter can always steal it back.

In addition, Hook’s plan would’ve failed for the most part if Jane hadn’t suggested they play Treasure Hunt to begin with. All she needed to do was find the treasure, not Peter. It’s not like she needed Peter to tell her where it was. She stumbled upon it on her own.

Hook also turns his back on his promise to not harm Peter as his exact wording was to not harm a hair on Peter’s head. So he merely plucks out one of his hairs, declares not to harm it and throws it to Jane. She promises that she’ll save Peter and heads off to the house to try to save Tink.

However, it’s too late. She’s dead and boy do I feel bad.

Oh come on, of course she’s not dead. Jane’s grief apparently sparks belief in fairies, which causes Tink to regain her strength and cheer Jane back up.

Hook is having fun tormenting Peter in the most tame way possible, and finally decides to make him walk the plank while tied to an anchor. However, Jane and Tinkerbell, who is much more likable when she’s not being a jealous twat, arrive on the ship to save Peter and the Lost Boys.

She frees the Lost Boys while Tink distracts Hook and Smee, and they send the pirates overboard by flinging the treasure into the ocean with slingshots. Jane manages to get the key for Peter’s handcuffs from Hook, but he chases her up the mast and corners her.

However, she finally believes she can fly……believes she can touch the sky. And with the power of faith, trust and pixie dust, she is finally able to fly off of the mast and away from Hook. Even the pirates cheer for her, which is weird because 1) She’s the enemy and 2) she just prompted the boys to chuck their treasure overboard.

Still, she unlocks Peter from his cuffs and the anchor and they fly around together for a bit…It kinda bothers me that they’re sorta playing up a romantic angle between the two of them considering the last person he did that with was Jane’s mother….

But the cheering doesn’t last long as Hook grabs Jane and pins her to the mast with his hook. Peter cuts the rope he’s hanging from, drops the anchor on him and sends him crashing through the whole ship and on top of, you guessed it, the octopus. The octopus then chases Hook back up into the ship, damaging it even further, causing the ship to sink and dragging Hook under while the Lost Boys escape.

However, for some reason, the damn thing can’t keep ahold of Hook despite the fact that it has eight long incredibly flexible legs and suction cups, and he launches out of the water again and into the life boat that the others are on. The octopus pops back up and now wants to eat all of them for no given reason and chases them away while making the popping noises.

The Lost Boys cheer their one and only Lost Girl for saving them, but Tink brings up that, since Jane can fly now, that means she can go home. While everyone’s sad to see Jane leave, she says that she’ll miss them all and tell her brother all sorts of stories about Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. Peter and the others say they’ll escort Jane back home and they head back to London.

Jane wakes up in front of her window (don’t worry, it’s not a dream sequence) and rushes to her mother to apologize for what she said earlier and to tell her that now she knows Peter Pan is real. Danny walks out having just had a bad dream, and Jane is quick to play around and comfort her brother with new stories of her adventures with Peter Pan.

Wendy smiles at the sight, but suspiciously looks out the window for something. Peter’s trying to catch a glimpse of her by the window and eventually the two reunite. While Peter points out that she’s changed and grown up physically, Wendy says that she hasn’t really changed on the inside.

Wendy also reunites with Tinkerbell, who gives her a shot of pixie dust, allowing her to float up a few feet, showing that she really hasn’t changed. Their reunion is short lived, however, since Peter needs to go back home. He bids Wendy goodbye as the kids also come up to the window and see Peter and Tink fly away.

And just because we have to have the most unrealistic and predictable ending possible, at that very moment, Jane’s father comes home from the war….the war that is still going so strong that they feel the need to send the children away to the countryside and told Wendy that very thing earlier in the night. He’s not injured or anything that I can see, so I have no clue how he got early leave. Also, does this mean that Jane and Danny aren’t being sent away anymore?

This kinda taints the ending because there’s no challenge in Jane trying to both retain her childhood and be mature if World War freakin’ II is magically over and her father’s home now.

We see Peter and Tink smiling at the reunion before they finally head home. The End….of this hour and two minute long movie that is only 70 minutes due to the credits.

I can’t speak as to how this movie may possibly offend the original, but the main gripes I’ve seen in reviews on IMDB are about how the characters act. Tinkerbell is supposedly more aggressive here than she is supposed to be, Peter Pan and the others are seen as being portrayed as jerks (mostly in regards to their rowdiness and destroying Jane’s book and laughing about it. Can’t say I disagree) and the fact that Peter Pan is not supposed to be some hero character, according to one reviewer – he’s just supposed to be a playful kid who screws around and gets into trouble.

I will say that the movie is more about Jane than Peter, which I think it’s supposed to be anyway, and Peter really is used mostly as a plot device to show that playing around, being childish, believing in magic and having fun aren’t particularly bad things. Granted, her transition was rather jarring and took place over the course of a song, but still we got the gist. As I stated, you don’t want to see her lose her childhood, but on the other hand you can greatly understand why she feels like she must.

Also, the fact that this is called Return to Neverland may seem misleading as none of the original human characters are actually returning to Neverland. Wendy is in this movie, but she only gets one short scene with Peter and doesn’t really fly much or visit Neverland. However, I found their reunion to be short and sweet.

Bottom Line: This movie is perfectly fine. Short, seemingly pointless, but perfectly fine. I actually laughed once or twice at the Lost Boys. While Peter, the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell do get grating sometimes, they all redeem themselves over and over. Jane is sympathetic, and you root for her to finally start having fun and having a childhood again.

The art and animation are much better than your average Disquel fare. Still not as good as their namesakes’ theatrical releases, but still really nice, except some shots with the ship. The music is actually really good, even if there is a real lack of original songs, and there’s only one song that is sung by the characters. It also might be somewhat weird that ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’ is the main ending credits song.

The movie’s main issue is in its predictability. While they kinda slap you in the face with World War II, the rest of the events are rather paint by numbers. You can really predict exactly what will happen through small prompts. Because of that, there’s nothing to really make this movie particularly special.

However, it’s still an enjoyable movie and far from one of the worse Disney sequels I’ve been subjected to. Maybe I would feel different if I were more of a childhood fan of the first film, but as it stands, I enjoyed watching this movie, and I’d recommend a watch to people looking for a light Disney movie.

Recommended Audience: There are some dark themes what with World War II and all, but it’s not like you see anyone die, and really this is lightest tale I’ve seen connected with World War II. It’s no Grave of the Fireflies or Barefoot Gen that’s for sure. 5+

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Dissecting the Disquels: The Fox and the Hound 2 Review

Plot: After Tod and Copper meet, but before they grow up, they go to a festival where Copper joins a band….That’s about it.

Breakdown: If there was one Disney sequel I was really dreading, it was this one. This is a midquel. Yes, not sequel; midquel. Disney, please, learn the difference. This takes place somewhere between when Copper befriended Tod and when Copper went off on his hunting trip.

Now, for those who never saw The Fox and the Hound, let me give you the low down.

Start of recap – Skip for Midquel review

An older woman finds a fox cub near her house. The fox’s mother was apparently killed, so she adopts him as her own. She names him Tod because he acts just like a toddler. In a neighboring house lives a grumpy old man and his old hunting dog, Chief. He recently got a new puppy to train as a hunting dog called Copper.

Copper and Tod soon meet and become friends, but due to the anger between their two owners and the fact that Tod is a fox and Copper’s a hunting dog living with a veteran hunting dog and a hunter, they find their friendship complicated. It’s made even worse by the fact that the hunter, Amos, is more than willing to kill Tod if he ever causes him trouble.

Copper and Tod try to remain friends, but find it incredibly difficult. Eventually, Copper is taken on a hunting trip to be properly trained to be a hunting dog and he won’t come back until the next spring.

Both Copper and Tod grow up in the meantime, and Copper eventually comes home. Tod wishes to continue their friendship, but Copper is very hesitant because he knows what the Chief and Amos would do to Tod if they ever caught him on his property.

Tod eventually does cause trouble at Amos’ house, which causes Amos, the Chief and a reluctant Copper to chase after him into the woods. This leads to the Chief getting injured. Copper blames Tod for Chief’s injury and basically cuts off the friendship with a hint at wanting revenge.

The woman, Widow Tweed, eventually concedes to the fact that having a fox as a pet, especially with a hunter and hunting dogs living next door, isn’t a good idea. So she takes Tod out into the woods and leaves him there to become a wild fox again, which would actually be a pretty bad idea, wouldn’t it? He may have instincts, but he’s been raised his entire life to be a domestic pet. He doesn’t know a damn thing about living in the woods. Also, he’s definitely bound to get shot and killed where its legal for Amos to shoot and kill him…..

Anyway, as fate would have it, he’s set up with a girl fox named Vixxy by an owl named Big Mama who has been watching over him since he was left at the house. Big Mama, by the way, is nowhere in the midquel. That’s both saddening and a bit of a relief. Despite some initial negative feelings, a quick yet great song and some nudging by Big Mama makes them quickly fall in love.

They live in peace together until Copper and Tod meet again as Copper’s on a hunting trip. Copper and Amos chase Vixxy and Tod and try numerous ways to finally take them down. The chase eventually leads to Tod getting thrown into the river and getting hurt. As Amos is about to take the kill shot, Copper steps up and stands in his way to protect his friend. Amos concedes and takes Copper home, and Copper and Tod both realize that they can never be together as friends in the world that they live in, but their friendship still stands.

End of recap, for those who wish to skip.

It’s a rather depressing-ish story for a Disney movie, to be honest. Such great friends can’t be friends based solely on their species no matter how hard they try. And this was Disney in the thick of the Disney Princess/Fairy Tale period.

For The Fox and the Hound 2, I guess they wanted to lighten the mood because it’s mostly all zany antics and Copper joining a band of singing dogs…..Yeaaaaahhhhhh….

The movie starts out with zany antics that go on for a full ten minutes in a 70 minute long movie. Copper and Tod, both back to puppy and kit form, are out playing and chasing a cricket. Copper messes up and falls on a fence, and the cricket gets away. He mopes and says he’s useless.

Then they see a bunch of cars carrying stuff for a local fair. Distracted by a car containing singing dogs, Copper falls into the road, almost gets run over and mopes about how he’s useless. Can someone please get this puppy some medication or something?

Amos calls Copper over for a hunting lesson, which makes Copper happy because he thinks this will be the one thing that he’s good at.

Did someone say zany antics? 😀

Amos tries to teach Copper how to hunt down a rabbit for a hunting dog competition at the fair. He does this by tying a sack of sand or something in the shape of something not resembling a rabbit to the Chief’s tail and making him run. Copper tries to follow the scent but gets turned around and finds Tod instead. Frustrated at getting turned around, Copper loses his grain of self-esteem again. Tod tries to explain what to do by telling him to

and howl when he finds the target. Copper tries to practice howling, which leads Amos and the Chief to finding Tod.

Tod runs away, and cue zany antics in Widow Tweed’s barn as she’s trying to milk the cow. Something weird happens during it though. The Chief actually sits right next to Tod as they watch Amos flail around. Why isn’t the Chief chasing Tod? He’s not friends with Tod at all.

Because of one failed training session, Copper loses his fair privileges and gets tied to his barrel/dog house even though I don’t know why he can’t just go to the fair. Why does he need to be in the competition to go to the fair?

Copper thinks he’s a failure again, and Tod tries to cheer him up be freeing him and taking him to the fair.

This is going to become a running gag. Whenever Copper and Tod agree upon something, they say “shake on it” and shake like, ya know, canines do. Whenever Tod does this, his fur gets all puffy for a second.

At the fair, Copper hears the singing dogs again and goes over to a nearby building to listen. A female dog who seems to be the frontrunner of the group, Dixie, voiced by Reba McEntire, trips on a loose board while rehearsing causing her to get into a fight with her singing partner/boyfriendIdunno and she walks off before the big show, leaving him and the other two singers to find a replacement before show time.

The boyfriend….dog thing, Cash, voiced by PATRICK SWAYZE? Aw, this means this was one of his last roles before he died! No one deserves that… Well, to his credit, he seems to do a very good job. Anyway, he decides that an old dog named Granny Rose will replace Dixie.

Wait, why doesn’t the human that plays banjo for them as they sing and I suppose owns them think anything of this? He doesn’t notice that one of his show dogs is missing?

Anyway, the show goes on, and if you like the song where dogs bark ‘Jingle Bells,’ you’ll love this segment because they’ve really just been howling their songs this whole time.

But I guess that’s not how it’s perceived in Copper’s ears, despite it being that way the last two times he’s heard them, because the song is quickly ‘translated’ for us in Copper’s head.

The song’s….ehhh not god-awful, but not good. Granny Rose sounds awful, though, to the point where the other dogs actually stop singing and their human stops playing because she sounds so terrible. Because of this, they hear Copper singing/howling along. He also sounds awful both howling and ‘translated’, but I guess he sounds less awful than Granny because Cash quickly nabs him up and prompts him to sing with them.

After the song ends, the crowd goes nuts. Cash actually whispers to Granny that the song was ‘hokey’, but the crowd loves him because he’s cute. Wow, nice bit of bitter reality there, Disney. Kinda reflects on the whole ‘Disney pop star’ craze, huh?

The dogs all praise him for his singing, which doesn’t really mesh with the previous scene, but I’m guessing they’re all buttering him up, including Tod. I know these aren’t trained hunting dogs like Chief, but I’m surprised they were just nonchalantly walking with a fox without even thinking twice about it…..Also, why is Widow Tweed not wondering where Tod is? You’d think, everything considered, that she’d make a better effort to keep a good eye on him.

They leave as they say that he has a real future in show business once he grows up a couple of years. Tod and Copper cheer as Copper has finally found something that he’s good at.

Cash and the others meet back up with Dixie who is not happy that she was replaced by a puppy and gets even angrier when Cash decides to mock her by essentially saying Copper was so great that he could replace her fully. Dixie explodes with anger and quits the group, which makes the others freak out, bringing us another running gag which is the other dogs in the group panicking, Cash yelling SIT and them immediately doing it and shutting up. Haha. This is especially nerve wracking because a cliché plot point otherwise known as the talent scout from the Grand Ole Opry is coming in to watch them perform today.

It’s at this point where I realize that this movie could literally be made with any generic dog and other animal team and it would be the same movie. There’s no friggin’ reason why this has to be a Fox and the Hound movie other than cashing in on the original.

Say what you will about the other Disney sequels, god knows I have, but at least you could tell that they were part of the original movie’s universe. Even Hunchback 2 is easily identifiable as such. This is just bland and generic and nowhere near the atmosphere or feeling of the original.

That’s another thing. To the best of my knowledge, the original Fox and the Hound wasn’t really a successful movie critic-wise. It was mostly received as average, but decent. And it’s not really one of the more well-known old Disney movies for the most part. Why try to cash in on that? For the people who actually do hold it near and dear to their hearts just to rip them open with Disney brand box cutters?

Cash tries to make up with Dixie, but fails, so he goes to recruit Copper.

Copper and Tod….are not only allowed to ride the Merry-Go-Round, but they’re the only ones on it. Not only is it improbable that a ride at a pretty popular town fair is completely empty in the middle of the day, but rides are usually turned off when no human is riding them. The operators could’ve put Copper and Tod on the ride and turned it on, but that seems kinda mean, actually.

Cash asks Copper if he’ll be willing to join the group full-time, but Copper says he’ll only do it if Tod’s allowed to join too since he’s his best friend. Cash asks Tod to sing, and he proves that he’s insanely awful, so Cash says he can be the entourage, which he basically explains as being an equipment manager/lackey for Copper and the others while they sing. Tod doesn’t really want to, but since Copper really wants to join the band, he agrees.

So, let me guess, Tod gets treated like crap due to his position in the band, Copper gets so caught up in the life of a ‘star’ that he doesn’t care, Tod gets mad and leaves, something happens where Copper realizes that the band isn’t worth losing his friendship with Tod, and they make up. Dixie realizes that she was being a diva, Cash realizes he was being an ass, and she and Cash make up. The talent scout loves them and signs them on for the Grand Ole Opry (I don’t see how this part won’t happen since they establish that the Grand Ole Opry is the groups’ dream and the talent scout actually seems like a very nice man.) The end.

Taking all bets that this is how it goes, because I’ve seen this in so many sitcoms…

In fact, screw it, I’m gonna read the Wiki synopsis and see if that’s what happens.

*some minutes later*

Yup, barring some minor details, that’s basically what happens. Oh and they make it even more cliché by making Cash and Dixie make up by making them both believe that the other is in trouble so they forget their petty squabbling and make up. How utterly bland.

Oh well, I won’t bother writing note for note what happens the rest of the way, but let’s grab some notes for nitpicking purposes.

– Why exactly is it so vital that Copper be a stray to be in the band? I mean, I know the band is called The Singing Strays, but they all technically have an owner with whoever that banjo player is. They all have collars, except Cash, who seems to sport a bandana, and Granny with her shawl. It’s not like in The Lady and the Tramp 2 where the dogs hate humans for mistreating them as pets in one way or another and ARE all strays who live in a junkyard. These dogs love humans because they pamper them and cheer them on. Why is it such a sin to not be a stray?

– Why is their human not wondering where Copper came from or why there’s a fox running around? Why is no human in this movie wondering why there’s a fox walking around? I mean, he’s feeding both of them like they’ve just always been there.

– So the two main couplings of this movie are Tweed and Amos, who are at each other’s throats 99% of the time, and Cash and Dixie, who are at each other’s throats 99% of the time. I know these movies aren’t really romance movies, but why should we cheer for either of these pairings (even if the former doesn’t ….realllllllyyyyy happen.) when they’re so unlikable when they share screentime? And considering Amos is an asshole and Dixie’s a bitchy diva, it makes it even worse.

– The next song is sung by Cash with the others as backup called ‘Hound’…I’m guessing ‘Dude’. This song….just sounds wrong. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the song as a whole, but the singing just sounds bad, which means sorry Mr. Swayze…I mean, the regular verses are just fine, in fact they’re pretty good, but the chorus is just a pain to listen to for some reason. Also, like 99% of all Disney sequel songs, this song has no point. It’s basically just telling Copper how exciting it will be to be famous.

– Wow, it took nothing at all to get Copper to ditch Tod. He basically says “Oh Cash, I need to watch the fireworks with Tod.” “Aw forget that, let’s go watch them together!” “OKAY! :D” Geez, way to be loyal to your friend, you hound douche. Also, to make matters worse, Tod is watching them as he says this. Ouch.

– Copper tells Tod that he forgot about the fireworks because he was so busy with Cash. WOW. A lying hound douche, too! Impressive.

– Our next song is by Dixie, and it’s basically a blues-ish country song to Tod about how being in show business actually kinda sucks. It starts out pretty good actually, but as the song gets bigger and bigger and then the farm animals sing and…..*cough* This song has a couple of lines that can be taken the wrong way. Like “He never howls your name” and the chorus which states “Good doggy, no bone” Am I being sick or does that just sound wrong?

– I’m 100% sure there’s no way to accidentally trigger it so that a Ferris wheel goes so fast that it falls from the supports. Also, if that happened, that would be friggin’ tragic – like the first mission from Hitman: Blood Money – not comedic.

– I’m also 100% sure that any elephant would be too heavy to ride on a tilt-a-whirl. If it wouldn’t break into pieces, it’d surely stop spinning or have insane difficulty spinning.

– I’m also also 100% sure that you’re thinking there’s no way this insane BS is in a Fox and the Hound movie. Well, it is.

– I’m….fairly certain that if a Ferris wheel ever did, for some reason, come free from it supports, it’s highly unlikely that it would easily roll around the fairgrounds. The cars would likely cause it to topple quickly. Also, Dixie would be dead ten times over if she was riding in one of those cars while it was doing that.

– So the antics of a kit and a dog destroyed the entire fair? Wow. Just wow.

– The next song is actually pretty good and surprisingly no one is ‘singing’ it, it’s just a background vocal song. It’s called ‘Into the Blue Beyond.’ Hm, it’s actually so good it almost doesn’t belong in this movie. However, I do have to say that the song is sorta ruined-ish because the scene behind it is so cliché. After all of the hullabaloo, the fair being destroyed and the group’s chances of getting picked up for the Grand Ole Opry dashed, Dixie feels regret for what she has done as does Tod. And cliché number….

1. It starts raining.
2. It gets dark.
3. Dixie sees the group getting sadly petted by their human as they bask in failure.
4. The sign for their group ends up falling in the mud.
5. Widow Tweed looks at Tod as he curls up in a ball in the car knowing he’s sad about something.
6. Tod sees Copper sitting out in the rain (odd, he could be in his barrel house thing staying dry, but this is more dramatic.) Copper sees him, gets an angry expression and makes a point to turn his back towards him and sit down.

About the only thing not cliché about that scene was Widow Tweed accidentally running the talent agent off the road, his hat falling on Tod’s head and then continuing to drive away. Hit and run much?

– I don’t really understand how the talent agent is interpreting the final song. If I try really hard to imagine all the lyrics as barks and the howls as harmonizing….it’d sound pretty bad. The only reason I could see him dancing to it is if he could actually hear the lyrics….

Barking Jingle Bells. Dance to that. Dare you. Also, where the hell did the banjo music come from? Their human was left back at the fair.

– I know I already said the ending of the whole Cash/Dixie plotline was gonna be cliché, but it’s as cliché as humanly friggin’ possible. I was mind-blown by it.

– Wait, did Cash propose to Dixie? What? Oh sure, Disney, let’s get right on that dog marriage right after that bear marri–

…..Lion mar–

….mermaid mar–

…..You win this round, Disney….

– What? Are you telling me that they’re honestly putting a bunch of howling dogs on the RADIO!? Okay, the Grand Ole Opry I could somewhat, tiny itty bit believe because it probably would hook in an audience of some kind, but the radio!? You’re seriously going to put howling and barking dogs on the radio? Yeah, that would happen in real lif—The Jingle Bells barking song plays on the radio sometimes in winter doesn’t it? You win this round also I guess, Disney.

– Why are Amos and Widow Tweed eating pie together happily at the end of this movie? Widow Tweed tolerates Amos at most and took pity on him when he was injured in the first movie. They’re not friends. Did these people even watch the first movie?

– Jeff Foxworthy was apparently in this movie I’m guessing as the banjo player? Wow, talk about reaching for a big name just for the sake of having a big name. His part is so minor, and you can’t even tell that’s him. I never even knew his name was Lyle.

– Guess what we end on? Go on, guess. Give up? TEN MINUTES OF CREDITS…..IN A 70 MINUTE LONG MOVIE. What….the hell…..Oh and three of those minutes are a recreation of the slapstick shenanigans from the beginning of the movie where we wasted another ten minutes on pointless shenanigans. Haha happy days! You’d almost forget that in the end these two are torn apart by the laws of nature and the norms of society.

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Dear God, this movie is a slap to the face in light of the original. It really is. It could’ve been worse. I mean, at least most of the songs were fairly decent, but it is a midquel that 1) didn’t need to exist at all because the original movie portrayed the message that this movie was trying to give just fine, just like Tarzan 2, 2) Seems to have no idea why the first was good because they try to match really nothing from it, and 3) is a cliché on top of a cliché wrapped in a cliché and gently toasted with a side of cliché.

When you can read the plot of a movie and give a detailed explanation as to what will happen in it without ever seeing a frame of the actual movie and be almost 100% right, you are doing it wrong. And I must reiterate that this movie could’ve been done without the original characters and nothing would’ve changed. Replace Tod with a cat, Copper with just a regular dog and boom, same movie.

It’s like…..you know Super Mario Bros. 2? How it was a completely different game at first, but had Mario sprites coded onto it to make a Mario game? That’s this movie. This movie is Super Mario Bros. 2 except not fun.

The only fairly memorable part of this movie was the little girl who I guess had the job of chaperoning the talent scout around the fair. She kept getting him into all sorts of dangerous and stressful situations as a result of attractions in the fair, and she just kept on like nothing was happening with a big smile on her face and a spring in her step. In the end, the talent scout is actually afraid of this girl. Why wasn’t this movie about her? Her small bits were the most original and entertaining of them all by a long shot.

Art and animation wise, the movie fares okay. The art is better than Hunchback 2 or the Aladdin sequels, but not really on par with Pocahontas 2 or Brother Bear 2.

Music wise, this movie fares better than most of the others I’ve seen. Reba McEntire does a good job singing when she’s not overdoing it, but some would probably be put off by the fact that most of the songs are country and banjo songs. I know I got annoyed by it after a while, and my dad listens to practically nothing but country music. Patrick Swayze is the same. He’s fine when he’s doing verses, but when he gets to big choruses it just sounds wrong.

Story wise, no….I’ve already given my take on how lame, stupid, predictable and almost insultingly bad this story is. If I say it again, that’s going to become a cliché.

The voice acting was actually pretty good. They got the voices of all of the original characters pretty well, and the new characters are also fairly well done.

Bottom Line: Don’t watch this movie. Don’t give Disney that pleasure. Watch the clock as the time changes. I guarantee you it will be less predictable. I’ll give some of the good people in the music department, Reba and Mr. Swayze some credit for making this movie slightly more bearable. Even if the other songs were meh, the ‘Into the Blue Beyond’ song was at least worth a listen. The scenes with the little girl are also alright, but just…no…..Please never watch this.

Recommended Audience: I’m probably reading too much into those lyrics I mentioned before, but there’s that. Other than that, nothing. E for everyone.

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Dissecting the Disquels: Aladdin and the King of Thieves

Plot: Aladdin and Jasmine are getting married (Finally! It only took 86 episodes and three movies….) when the party is crashed by a man named Cassim, leader/king of the infamous band of forty thieves. Aladdin becomes curious about the thief, and soon learns that he’s much more to him than he ever could have expected.

Breakdown: Here’s a cool little factoid; Aladdin’s mom is not only alive, she was meant to be a fairly significant part of the first movie. You can see her deleted scenes on the Aladdin DVD where we see that Aladdin was stealing not just for himself but also to support his mother. They even had an additional and subsequently cut song called ‘Proud of Your Boy’ to showcase this that was rerecorded by Clay Aiken for the special edition DVD release.

When he finds the genie and makes his wishes to be a prince in order to marry Jasmine, his mother advises him to drop the charade and tell Jasmine the truth, same as the genie. However, her character was scrapped somewhere along the line in the project, and we’re left to assume that she got killed by the Disney mother-hating gods along with Jasmine’s mom.

Here’s another factoid; in this movie, they mention his mom. She supposedly died when Aladdin was very young, and he was left to fend for himself while his father was presumed dead. Though I’m not quite certain how. If Aladdin remembers his mom, surely she must’ve told him that his dad just left instead of died, but they never go into details. Maybe she purposely lied to him.

One more note: look at that poster. That poster is apparently a rarity. Why? Well, I specifically wanted to find a poster that didn’t say a particular line on it.

Now recall why Robin Williams didn’t want to reprise his role as Genie in the second movie. He agreed to do Genie’s voice in the first movie if they promised not to use his likeness (Genie himself) or his name to push the movie.

What did they do?

They made Genie’s picture take up a huge part of the box art, made his credits as the peddler and Genie come first before the main characters, and shrunk down the main characters on the box art so Genie would get all the focus. When the second movie and series came around, Robin basically told them to kiss his ass and Dan Castellanata came in to take over the role.

Robin Williams reconciled with Disney and agreed to do the third one….after Dan Castellanata already recorded all of the audio for the role. But they really wanted Robin back so they just gave Dan his paycheck and showed him the door.

I’m pretty sure there was no previously agreed upon marketing strategy for this movie, but while I was looking for posters to use for this review, I noticed something odd.

Many of the covers stated “Starring Robin Williams” on the front.

Specifically, all of these and probably more.

You may notice that the first poster doesn’t only say “Starring Robin Williams,” it also takes the time out to boast “Robin Williams is back as the Genie!”

I have no clue what went on there. Was this agreed upon with Robin Williams, or did Disney basically want to give Robin a big ‘Screw you’ for not doing the second movie and the series?

What makes this even stupider is the fact that Genie does quite literally nothing in this movie. He stays on the sidelines being comic relief. He does fight off some of the thieves here and there, but it’s nothing that couldn’t have been done with the others. The only times he ever shows off his Genie powers is just to make jokes. This movie hardly ‘stars’ Robin Williams as Genie. He honestly doesn’t even get much screentime.

Going through these posters in hindsight actually hurts a little now that Robin Williams has passed away. You really just cannot ever replace that man in more ways than one. Dan Castellaneta did fine as Genie, but Robin Williams was, quite literally, the Genie. And you just can’t replicate true magic like that.

I only recently watched this movie after catching it in passing on Disney XD. I rewatched it for this review, but I remember feeling rather good about how the movie went. I really thought it was a good ending to probably the best animated series spun off from a classic Disney movie.

However, I do have my problems with it….Let’s begin.

——————————————-

We start with seeing the thieves entering the palace while sneaking in through baskets on camels. We learn that Aladdin and Jasmine are finally getting married as a merchant asks the familiar royal guard about the hullabaloo. The merchant reveals himself to be Genie, and he gives us our title, which turns into a burnt out neon sign. Genie then tells us that we didn’t ‘believe’ enough to make the title what it was supposed to be.

Peter Pan reference, let’s start the tally!

Disney Jokes: 1

Oh, you may be wondering what this is about. Well, you know how Genie is such a fan of making references and doing impersonations and stuff? Well, it seems like, for some reason, Genie has suddenly gotten on a huge Disney bender as he makes a lot of Disney references and impersonations in this movie. I have no clue why or if this is mirrored in the animated series, but he does.

And Genie turns into Tinkerbell to transition us to the next scene.

Disney Jokes: 2

We get our first song, ‘There’s a Party Here in Agrabah’ and it’s actually a pretty good and catchy song. Doesn’t have much of a point, but it’s pretty good.

Eh….I won’t count the Jafar mask towards the tally since it’s the same universe.

At the end of the song, everyone wonders where Aladdin is, and we cut to Aladdin back in his old abode. He still keeps wearing his old thief garb despite being as close to a prince as he can possibly get (except now his vest has a gold trim for some reason).

Genie catches up to him and asks what he’s doing there when he should be at the wedding. Aladdin’s getting an old heirloom of his deceased father; a valuable dagger that he honestly should’ve taken with him when he moved into the palace instead of keeping it in his unsecured rat hole of a home.

He claims he’s uneasy about getting married because it’s such a huge step in his life. He had no male role model while growing up (or…well, I guess any role model considering they killed off his mom) and doesn’t know how to raise a family. WHOA. You’re just getting married, Aladdin. Talk about kids at Disney’s next attempt to milk this franchise.

He then reprises ‘There’s a Party in Agrabah’ in a gentler tone, giving somewhat of an homage to the first movie’s ‘One Jump Ahead’ and reprise. This is also a rather nice song. Aladdin does sound odd here, though. He hasn’t changed his singing VA, but he just sounds too high pitched. Iago butts in, and we go back to the more upbeat version after only seven seconds or so of gentle reprise. Hmph.

I find it funny that they keep saying ‘they’re finally getting married’ yet they’re not giving any reason whatsoever as to why they waited so long. This is probably the longest any Disney princess (who has gotten married) has ever waited to get married after meeting their love interest. And I don’t count either of the Lion King movies because they were too young when they first met to actually get married, and they basically immediately got married when they reunited with their love interests.

The whole ‘jumping into marriage with a person you barely know’ thing isn’t exactly a healthy message to keep shoving into these movies, but an actual reason as to why these people, who have been engaged for years, haven’t been married yet would be nice. This is especially weird considering that one of the main plot points of the first movie was the urgent need to find Jasmine a husband.

Anyway, the thieves get into the palace and we cut back to the wedding festivities.

By the way, Genie is actually being pretty funny here as opposed to the second movie where he pretty much got annoying. I’m not sure how much adlibbing Robin is doing here. He did quite a bit in the original movie – so much so that the movie was disqualified from getting an award for best screenplay.

Hey, the Genie turned into the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland when he got behind schedule.

Disney Jokes: 3

Okay, he’s funny when he’s not Disney-fied.

The wedding starts and the sultan comes out…wearing an orange version of his regular garb for some reason. You’d think the white version would be fine for a wedding, but I guess he wanted to dress up like the Nickelodeon logo.

Jasmine walks out and oh pretty wedding dress. They’re about to start the ceremony, but we cut back to Cassim going through with his plan. His right-hand man, Sa’luk, who doesn’t like Cassim, by the way, sends one of their elephants in to charge the place.

Genie: “Whoa, I thought the earth wasn’t supposed to move until the wedding.” Hey Disney, calm down! You already had a stripper joke earlier. You’re going to be at porn before we even get to the second act.

More elephants start wrecking the place, and the thieves start robbing people blind while Cassim goes off to find something particular. Iago tries to fight him off, but gets stuffed in a bottle. Cassim finds the item, a staff of some sort, and has a tussle with Aladdin.

Hell, even Jasmine gets in a good right hook in this big thief fight. Of course, that’s downplayed by the fact that a carpet and a monkey also take some out….In fact, they take out more than she does…

The Genie shows off a bit to intimidate the thieves, and Sa’luk says to retreat because he wasn’t aware that a genie was there…..really? It seems like his existence is no secret. He shows off quite frequently in town and around the palace. I find it really hard to believe that this information never made it back to you.

Sa’luk and the others ditch Cassim while Cassim still has it out over the staff with Aladdin. However, one of the elephants charges at them. Aladdin gets out of the way with the staff while Cassim hitches a ride on the elephant and gets away, promising to return for the staff later.

As the group tries to pick up the pieces, Aladdin, Jasmine and the others try to figure out why Cassim wanted the staff so much. A voice from within the staff claims it’s because Cassim wanted to use it to find the ultimate treasure. A mysterious woman bathed in white projects from the staff, and Genie claims it’s an oracle – a being who grants its users the answer to absolutely any question, but only one per person.

Jasmine says they can use the question to figure out their futures, which is the dumbest thing you could possibly use an oracle for. Your future will come eventually, which means you’ll get the answers eventually. Why waste such an awesome ability to get something you will get in time sooner?

The only reason I could see for using the question for that is if she’s having cold feet about the wedding and wants to know if it will really work out to ensure she doesn’t make a big mistake.

However, Aladdin says he knows his future is with Jasmine (*cue ‘awwws’*) and says he wants to know about his past since his mother died when he was just a boy and he never knew his also dead dad. Aladdin says the oracle can’t help him with that because he has too many questions about his past and can’t limit it to one, but the oracle says the questions can be answered if he reunited with his father and she shows us a picture of Aladdin’s dad, Cassim. Well, hell, spoiler tags would be nice, Oracle. Dammit! He went to the trouble of wearing a mask and everything!

We get an obvious enter-commercial-break-if-this-is-airing-on-TV fade to black here after Aladdin finds out that his dad has been alive all this time.

Cut to Aladdin sulking at his old ‘house’ where Jasmine comes to talk with him. Aladdin’s conflicted because his dad’s an asshole who left him and his mother, and now he’s thinking he shouldn’t find out anything further.

Jasmine tries to cheer him up with our movie’s romantic number ‘Out of Thin Air’, which is also pretty good and memorable, but dammit all they’re not even trying to make a love song as awesome as ‘A Whole New World.’ I don’t even know why they bother if they’re not going to try. We do get to see a little boy Aladdin, so that’s something.

At the end of the song, they decide that he should find his father so that he can get to know him and have him be at the wedding and whatnot. The oracle tells them that Aladdin’s father is ‘trapped’ by the forty thieves.

Oh come now. Really? You’re trying to pull that old Obi-Wan ‘Well, my wording was TECHNICALLY correct’ thing? Aladdin, of course, freaks out and believes his father’s been a prisoner with the thieves for many years, but the oracle won’t answer anymore questions. Thought we made that rule pretty clear, Al.

It’s up to Aladdin to follow the trail to the forty thieves’ lair and “save” his father from them.

Luckily, the thieves haven’t made it back to their lair yet as Aladdin catches up to them. He thinks he has them trapped as they reach the ocean (?), but Cassim parts it. He says “Open Sesame” (Which, in my opinion, sounds really silly nowadays considering how many times it’s been turned into a joke, but I understand why it’s in this movie seeing as how it’s based on Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves), a bunch of explosions happen at a bit of land across the water, a straight blast of lava goes to the shore and parts the water, making a pathway.

The thieves follow it to their lair while Aladdin barely manages to follow.

They listen in on their meeting and, despite grabbing everything from everyone in sight and only facing minor troubles, apparently the thieves got away with absolutely nothing…Weird. Sa’luk is outraged, and the other thieves start supporting him as he opposes Cassim. Hearing his name and seeing him without his mask alerts Aladdin to the fact we already figured out ten minutes ago – Cassim, the King of Thieves, is Aladdin’s father.

Sa’luk is about to attack Cassim, but Aladdin comes out of the shadows to defend him and claims he’s Cassim’s son. Cassim picks up the dagger and stops the fighting by saying the dagger is proof that he’s Aladdin’s father.

However, this doesn’t settle matters for long as Sa’luk says it doesn’t matter who he is, he’s a trespasser who has seen too much of their lair and must be killed along with Iago, Abu and the carpet. Cassim, being the leader, gets the final call, but he’s being pressured by the others since they view him as merciful and weak.

In a bit of a twist, Cassim says to kill him, but as Sa’luk is about to do so, he brings up another option – the challenge. It’s basically an initiation into the forty thieves. Since the number stays at forty, the only way they recruit new members is by having a potential new member fight to the death with a current member.

Sa’luk has volunteered to fight Aladdin, and the battle begins. Aladdin struggles with Sa’luk for a bit and even gets injured by his brass/gold claw things. However, he unsheathes his father’s dagger and fights back. It’s actually a pretty well done fight. The visuals, coupled with the relative lack of sound beyond music is pretty impacting.

Sa’luk throws Aladdin off a cliff, but he manages to save himself by sticking his dagger into the side of the cliff and sliding down onto another smaller ledge. Sa’Luk follows him to finish the job, but before he can, Aladdin kicks him, which causes him to stumble and fall off the ledge into the water like a good Disney villain.

After defeating Sa’luk, Aladdin is welcomed into the band of forty thieves with a song, ‘Welcome to the Forty Thieves’ – a song that is also pretty good. I love Aladdin’s face through the whole thing. I imagine that’s how any normal person would look if a bunch of people, especially criminals, randomly broke out into song.

Cut to the waters below where we see that Sa’Luk has not only somehow survived, but he is also fistfighting two sharks. That seems impressive, but I just got back from watching the first episode of Power Rangers Dino Thunder where Tommy kicks a T-Rex in the face….so yeah I kinda need more to be impressed at the moment.

Back at the palace, Jasmine’s getting worried. Genie tries to cheer her up by doing an impression of Mrs. Doubtfire. Get it?! Get it!? That’s a role played by Robin Williams! Robin Williams was Mrs. Doubtfire! Get it?!

He keeps trying with more impressions and more magic. He then makes the pumpkin carriage and turns Jasmine into Cinderella.

Disney Jokes: 4

He then turns Jasmine into Snow White and makes a Snow White reference.

Disney Jokes: 5

While making mock ideas for Jasmine as more girls of Disney, he shows her as Ariel,

Disney Jokes: 6

Minnie,

Disney Jokes: 7

and Jessica Rabbit.

Disney Jokes: 8

Jasmine thanks him for cheering her up, and we cut back to Aladdin and Cassim as he’s showing him a secret room.

He says that he’s been searching for a long time and is close to finding the legendary treasure, the Hand of Midas, which turns anything that it touches into gold. While Aladdin says it’s nothing but a myth (Dude, you’re best friends with a genie, you know a talking parrot, you ride a magic carpet as your primary mode of transportation and you’ve battled a sorcerer turned genie on two occasions. Not to mention all of the magic stuff you’ve seen in the TV series. You’re seriously going to start throwing around ‘myth’ as a derogatory term now?) Cassim shows him a sunken ship made entirely of gold that proves that the Hand is real…..he never thought to retrieve some of that gold and sell it?

He explains how he was sick of living the life of a ‘street rat’ and longed for a better life, thus he left home to pursue the great treasure to give his wife and unborn son a better future. However, he became so consumed by his pursuit that he ended up going years without returning to Agrabah and his family. When he returned, he couldn’t find his wife, whom I guess was already dead, and figured his family was either dead or simply gone.

Aladdin says he and his mother didn’t need riches, they only needed him. (*cue more ‘awwwws’*) He invites him to the wedding, but Cassim has doubts about it since they live in two different worlds now. Iago, however, being ever so helpful, convinces him to go since he mentioned that Aladdin used the oracle to find Cassim, thus he has the oracle back at the palace and can steal it at the wedding.

We cut back to that guard guy who is being offered a chance to catch the King of Thieves by Sa’Luk by giving him the password and location of their lair.

The guard and his guard friends get to the spot where you have to open the entrance to the hideout of the forty thieves. I guess they didn’t want to animate the opening sequence again, because all we get is rumbling and we don’t get to see the path opening.

Aladdin and his dad arrive at the palace, and Genie pops up again showing us his wedding stuff like a robot that’s meant to keep out people who weren’t invited. We get a REALLY forced Pocahontas reference while Genie is freaking out about the King of Thieves being in the palace.

You know how you say ‘Geronimo’ when you jump off of something or out of a plane? When the Genie clones are making their jokes about police and military being dispatched in response to Cassim being there, one says ‘Geronimo,’ another says ‘Navaho’ and the final one says ‘Pocahontas’ while dressed as Pocahontas.

Disney Jokes: 9

And no, there wasn’t a single frame of this shot that wasn’t frightening.

Aladdin straightens everything out between the Genie and Cassim, and Aladdin wants to introduce Cassim to Jasmine and the sultan. However, Genie doesn’t think that’s a good idea since, ya know, the King of Thieves garb and whatnot. So we make him over……*sigh* to song.

I swear no one can have a damn makeover without musical accompaniment in any movie. In addition, this is also the weakest song in the movie in my opinion. It’s not memorable and the lyrics are kinda cheesy. It’s not nearly as bad ‘There’s Nothing in the World Quite Like a Friend’ from Return of Jafar, but it’s still the weakest. It’s also odd that Genie sang both of those songs. Hm.

Of course I should mention that there’s little makeovering going on during this song. It’s like they said ‘Well, we have a pretty good segue to a song, but I hate makeover songs so let’s make it something that has nothing to do with the last line being said before the song starts! Remember to practically jump cut Cassim into new clothes at the end, though!’ The song is called ‘Father and Son’ and the entire focus is just talking about how they’re going to get to do cool father-son stuff together like play sports.

Cassim meets the sultan and Jasmine, and they love him because he’s so charming. They’re also under the false assumption that he was ‘trapped’ by the forty thieves. Now that the truth’s been established….that’s some real stretching the oracle was doing.

I mean the whole thing in Star Wars saying Luke’s father was dead just because Obi Wan sees it as Anakin ‘died’ when he became Darth Vader was a stretch, but it was at least passable. Cassim being ‘trapped’ by the forty thieves when he seems to adore his life as thief is a huge stretch.

Yes, he’s consumed by finding the Hand of Midas, but what was his drive to find it after losing his son and wife in the process? Just his desire to not be a poor street rat. Greed consumes him. He’s not trapped by the forty thieves; he uses them for his own purposes to get the Hand because he wants to be rich. It’s not even about the Hand entirely because he still obviously loves stealing and pulling off heists. If he’s trapped by anything, it’s his own personality flaws.

Aladdin’s happy that he has a father now and everything’s all well and good. That means this one of those telling scenes that basically says ‘Yeah, but the audience knows he intends on betraying him, so we know this shot is just meant to highlight that Aladdin will be crushed when he does.’

They even end the song on a noogie. The sheet music for this song must literally be made of cheese.

Cut back to the guards where the forty thieves have been caught, but not Cassim because he wasn’t at the hideout. One of the other guards says the sentencing of the forty thieves has to wait until tomorrow because they’re having Aladdin and Jasmine’s wedding Take 2. Sa’luk tells the guards that Cassim is actually Aladdin’s father and we get eeeeeeevil smirks.

Back at the palace where the wedding is about to begin and Cassim is nowhere to be found. In order to cheer up Aladdin, Genie turns into Pumbaa and says “Hakuna Matata.”

Disney Jokes: 10

In the….random treasure room, Cassim and Iago are breaking into the incredibly poorly guarded and poorly locked room where the oracle is being kept. And it’s this point where I realize that his desire to get the hand is even stupider than I thought.

His son is Aladdin….who is marrying Jasmine….a princess of a whole country….which means he will eventually become sultan and have all the treasures and leisure that he could want. He’d easily be able to allow Cassim to live in the palace and get treated like royalty as long as no one found out who he really was. Iago gets treated like that, I don’t see why he couldn’t. Hell, as sultan, Aladdin could admit who Cassim is and still keep him around. He’s the goddamn sultan, who you gonna tattle to?

Why would he give that chance up for The Hand? Simple. The Hand gives the opportunity for much more money. See? It’s all about greed. It’s not about just not being a street rat.

Back with Aladdin and the others, Genie wants to go out and find Cassim, and he starts off by turning into Pluto (the dog).

Disney Jokes: 11

The guards capture Cassim and Iago and reveal his true identity to the sultan and Jasmine while Aladdin is angry that Cassim merely used him to get inside the palace to steal the oracle.

The lead guard who does have a name but I don’t care to learn it, says the law is crystal clear on his fate. Jasmine asks if there’s anything they can do, and the sultan says no, which never ceases to piss me off.

You’re the SULTAN. YOU make the laws! You changed the law about marriage in the first movie without a thought (Well, eventually, after it stopped being a plot point to have it there) yet freeing a thief from life in prison is beyond your scope of sultan powers!?

It also seems a little offset seeing as how Aladdin was going to be killed for petty thievery in the first movie while this is the king of thieves and he’s just getting life in prison. I know Jafar made that execution order, but the sultan never said that wasn’t a normal punishment for thieves, just that he should’ve talked to him beforehand.

Genie: (In response to Cassim getting arrested) “There are some wishes even I can’t grant.” Really?! I thought your only restrictions were no bringing people back to life, no wishing for someone to love you, no killing and no wishing for more wishes. Freeing a thief from prison is also outside of a GENIE’S realm of power. Wow, I hate the latest Aladdin patch; everyone got nerfed.

Back at Aladdin’s favorite hiding spot, his old house, he actually says straight out that the oracle was right in saying he was trapped by the forty thieves because has trapped by his own greed…..but that’s STILL the same amount of stretching. She should’ve said “Your father’s in the lair of the forty thieves. He is trapped there.” That would’ve made it less of a leap to say he was trapped by his own greed, but she specifically said he was trapped BY the forty thieves, which makes this whole ‘trapped by greed’ thing far harder to digest. But I digress.

Aladdin sulks and says his life was perfect before his dad screwed everything up so he asks Genie to poof up the King of Thieves garb to break his dad out of prison…….I….did I skip a scene?….No…No, he just instantly goes from ‘My dad ruined my life’ to ‘I’m risking the rest of what’s left of my life and future with Jasmine to pretend to be the King of Thieves and break my deadbeat thief of a dad out of prison’.

…Well, okay. He claims it’s to ensure that he stays out of his life, but how will breaking him out of prison ensure that? If anything, you’d think it’d be better to leave him down there because at least he wouldn’t be able to cause anymore problems.

Cut to Cassim in the dungeon and—wow, he doesn’t even get chained up as much as Aladdin did. In the first movie, Aladdin got his hands shackled above his head directly to the wall. Cassim gets handcuffs and like a whole leash of chains.

He is the King of Thieves. This country practices really crappy security protocol. Sentence the petty thief to death and shackle him to the wall. Leave the priceless valuables behind an unguarded see-though gate in the palace with one lock that can be picked in less than two seconds. Sentence the King of Thieves to life imprisonment, but just give him handcuffs that have about two feet of space between the shackles and 12 feet of chains to the wall. It’ll be fine.

Aladdin breaks Cassim out of jail and makes the guards chase him so Cassim can get away. He gets away for a while by doing the cool street rat parkour everyone loves to watch him do, but the lead guard guy catches him and finds out he’s really Aladdin. Cassim comes to rescue him, and they soon make it to the outskirts of town on horseback.

Cassim wants to run, but Aladdin can’t because he doesn’t want to abandon Jasmine, even if that means facing prison for freeing Cassim. They argue a bit, but part ways with Iago deciding to go with Cassim because they have the oracle and….wait, what?

They have the oracle? How? They were caught right before they stole it. Even if they did manage to steal it, the guards surely would’ve taken the staff from them the instant they caught them and before they ever managed to use it. Oh yeah, I forgot. Agrabah’s security force is about as useless as my old PHP textbook.

Back at the forty thieves’ lair….wait, WHAT? How did they get back to the lair? They were just awaiting sentencing in prison a few minutes ago. When did they escape? How did they escape? Why would they be dumb enough to return to their lair after escaping if the royal guards know where it is and know the magic words to access it?

Ah, whatever. They wonder who told the guards about their lair, and Sa’luk reappears to frame Cassim for it. The thieves don’t want to believe it because they’re loyal to their king, and the only ‘evidence’ that it was him was the fact that he knew the password to get into the lair and the guards found out. But all of the thieves know the password, including the guy who hates Cassim and has been conspicuously gone for the past two days only to show up immediately after a supposed betrayal. Not going to expect the brains of a scholar in any of these thieves, but come on.

In order to convince them, we get our ‘villain’ song, I guess, called ‘Are You In or Out?’ which is basically the same realm of villain song as ‘You’re Only Second Rate’ from the second movie. It’s catchy and okay, but there’s no real oomph to it.

Also, he’s convincing them that he’s right and Cassim’s the one who put them in jail by breaking everything in the lair, beating the thieves up and saying Cassim was a bleeding heart? If Cassim is such a softie, why would he do something as coldhearted as betrayal?

I should also mention that it looks like, from this scene anyway, that the forty thieves got reduced to like five or seven. Where’d everyone else go?

Back with Cassim and Iago, Iago states that he doesn’t want to split even limitless treasure over forty ways, but Cassim says he’d never leave his men out because they’re family to him and he knows he could always at least count on them.

Wait, is he mad at Aladdin?….For what? He just risked his life and future to release him from prison – a prison he was only in because he’s a greedy prick, mind you. Just because he didn’t want to follow him and be on the lam for the rest of his life and give up his fiancé for the sake of treasure makes him a bad son or something? Wow, you’re an ass.

They go into the back entrance of the lair or whatever that is and find themselves face to face with what’s left of the thieves, their swords and bats and Sa’luk.

Cut to the thieves on a boat in the middle of the ocean (Seriously, where are the other thieves?) with Cassim and Iago tied up. They force him to ask the oracle the location of the Hand of Midas. She shows them the way and Iago manages to get away and fly off to the palace to alert Aladdin and the others.

Back at the palace, the sultan and the head guard guy are discussing Aladdin’s crimes. And the final verdict is ‘You did it out of love, so let’s just forget about it.’…….Yeah, yeah. The sultan has no power to keep the King of Thieves out of life in prison, but he can instantly forgive someone freeing said King of Thieves from prison because he did it out of love. I don’t understand this legal system.

Iago finds Aladdin and the others and alerts them to the fact that Sa’luk has captured Cassim. Aladdin initially doesn’t want to save him since he chose a life of crime, but we all know he’d never abandon his dad. It’d be a funnier movie if he did, though. “Your dad’s in danger!” “So what? He chose that life. Let’s get married now!” “k” The end.

They all arrive at the Vanishing Isle (location of the Hand), which is actually an underwater city built on the back of a giant turtle. The city is actually pretty impressive, but it’s fairly odd that the turtle is clearly painted, and when it moves it looks really weird like a cardboard cutout. Jasmine actually kicks more thief ass (Ya know, I never realized how much I like Jasmine….When she’s actually doing stuff anyway.) and Aladdin beats up Sa’luk.

After that’s all said and done, they go off to find the Hand of Midas. You guys might want to tie up Sa’luk….Simply knocking out the villain and walking away is just asking for a rematch. Just sayin’.

They find the Hand of Midas which is actually a small golden hand being held by a statue that is floating on a giant golden hand…..*shrug* The giant turtle dives underwater, causing the Vanishing Isle to start flooding. The first shot of the Hand is actually a really cool rotating shot and conveys the weight of the reveal quite well.

….Though, while the reveal is awesome, the Hand itself is quite….silly looking. I keep thinking of Spongebob’s Glove World flashlight when I see it.

Aladdin jumps to the hand, retrieves it, then throws it to his father, which is kinda stupid considering he knows that thing turns everything it touches into gold. This is shown when Cassim catches it in his cape, which turns into gold, but it still flows and everything so I guess it’s gold thread for some reason. He shows off the power even more by using the Hand on the statue he’s standing on and it turns everything in the room solid gold barring the water which just looks like Sunkist.

However, that begs the question, if the power extends to everything that the object being affected is touching, wouldn’t Cassim have been turned to gold? He’s standing on the statue. He’s wearing the cape. He should be a statue himself right now.

Anyway, Sa’luk arrives and somehow also jumps on the giant golden hand and gives Cassim an ultimatum; give him the Hand of Midas or Aladdin dies. And kudos to everyone who saw this outcome coming 20 minutes ago, but Cassim agrees and throws the hand to Sa’luk. He catches it by the hand part and not the staff part (why doesn’t the handle part turn to gold?) and he gets turned into gold and falls into waters below. I love how that entire plan relied on Sa’luk catching the Hand in the least likely fashion. What would he have done if he actually caught it by the handle?

Also, congratulations Aladdin 3, you are one of few Disney sequels with the balls to pretty much kill off the villain. (One could argue that, like in Pokemon the First Movie, turning someone into something like rock or gold isn’t technically dying, but there’s no reversal switch for this unless a genie is able to, so I’m calling it a death.)

Aladdin wraps up the Hand in his sleeve, which turns to gold, and sticks it in his belt, which doesn’t gold-statue-ify him for some reason, so he and Cassim can escape.

Cassim’s having a hard time climbing with his gold cape so he throws it off, and Aladdin and Cassim escape…..well, kinda. They just stand on top of the building they were in. Considering the reason the place was flooding was because the turtle was diving, shouldn’t they still be escaping? It’s like the turtle paused in diving for a while to let them talk.

Anyway, we get a blech-y line about how the Hand’s not the real treasure, Aladdin is, and he throws the Hand away. However, the Hand falls onto the boat of the thieves, and their boat turns to gold and sinks. They live, but also get left behind later so *shrug*.

Why doesn’t the ocean turn to gold?

Aladdin and the others escape on the magic carpet, but where’s the been-useless-this-entire-movie Genie? He was eaten by the turtle earlier while he was trying to ’cause a distraction’ but it didn’t seem to do anything so I dunno. And he escapes from the turtle how? I’m gonna say…Little Mermaid reference?…I doubt he’d do an Atlantis: The Lost Empire reference, so yeah Little Mermaid.

Survey Says!….

…Steamboat Willie reference? Who the hell in your target audience would understand that? I mean, yeah that same cartoon was given a slot in Kingdom Hearts, but who watching this movie would really get that?

Oh and….

Disney Jokes: 12

They return to the palace, have their wedding (for the third time) and Cassim’s in the shadows watching the festivities before he goes back on the run again with Iago joining him. They head off, as do Aladdin and Jasmine on the carpet, as we get a reprise of ‘Arabian Nights’ which also sounds closer to the original than the second movie’s rendition did in terms of melody and tone, and the story of Aladdin ends.

Art and Animation: Sadly, the art and animation are the same as the TV show, which equals blech. Some aspects such as the reveal of the Hand and the opening of the forty thieves’ hideout are really well done, but it’s nowhere near as fantastic as the first movie.

Music: The music fares a lot better than most other Disney sequels and is much better than the second movie’s in terms of actual quality of the songs and not earworm-ness. Apparently they made an entirely unique score to this movie as well instead of remixing the first movie’s like the second one’s did. Good on them.

Bottom Line: This movie, despite its story problems, is actually a much stronger sequel than Return of Jafar in my opinion.

Most of the second movie was just dealing with Iago, which was annoying. Only the last third or so had any real interesting stuff with Jafar, and even that wasn’t amazing.

This movie, while still not being amazing, is one of the stronger Disney sequels as a whole. It has an interesting story that actually explores something that fans of the first movie may have actually wondered about instead of answering dumb questions like Disney sequels and pretty much sequels in general tend to do. I wish we would’ve explored more of Aladdin’s backstory and his relationship with his mother, though. Hell, we don’t even know how she died.

So, yeah, this is one of those Disney sequels I’d actually recommend. It’s not a masterpiece, there are several glaring continuity/storytelling problems, and I really wish they would’ve kicked up the budget for the final installment of the series since it was so good, but it still stands pretty well on its own.

….I’d still like to know why they got on a sudden Disney reference kick for this, though. There are plenty of other jokes, but they really work Disney references to the bone.

Recommended Audience: There are some sexual innuendos, but they’re pretty subtle. Some minor violence, no sex or nudity etc. 6+

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Dissecting the Disquels: Brother Bear 2

Plot: Kenai and Koda are back, and Kenai has reunited with his old friend Nita who wants a favor. She’s trying to get married, but apparently she’s already been promised to Kenai after giving her an amulet when they were children. The great spirits support monogamy so they force Kenai and Nita to go to the place where the amulet was given to burn the amulet and break the bond between the two. However, even the simplest tasks can be complicated when love enters the picture.

Breakdown: I loved the movie Brother Bear. It’s not as dear to my heart as some other Disney movies, but I still loved it. It had wonderful visuals, a good story, mostly good characters and great music. One of the best things about Brother Bear is that it’s one of the few Disney movies to almost completely omit the subject of romance.

The main characters never fall in love, they have no romantic interests, and there’s no big get together or wedding at the end. The most romance that they had in that movie was some sappy couple of bears at the salmon run that were meant to be comedy focuses, and a passing flirtation with Denahi and a couple of girls. That’s it. There was no room in Brother Bear for romance because the story was set purely on the brothers; Kenai, Denahi and Sitka, and Kenai and Koda. The reason I loved that was because I am really just so sick of stories feeling like they need to shoehorn in romance into any and all storylines even if there’s no room or no point.

In this sequel, they rectify that by having the entire movie, subplots and all, be about love and marriage. Oh and brotherhood is squeezed in there somewhere. Every character that reappears in this movie gets a love interest beyond Koda, and love is shoved so far down your throat that it’s painful.

Well, let’s ruin another Disney movie for me. Welcome to Brother Bear 2.

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We start with Kenai and Koda chasing each other as the opening music plays. The music’s somewhat reminiscent of the original movie’s, but noticeably different. The opening song, ‘Welcome to this Day,’ pales in comparison to ‘Great Spirits.’ Right from the start you can tell we’re in for a romance themed movie with swans making a heart shape with their necks to happy little goat parents watching their children.

Why hasn’t Koda grown….at all? In the least? It’s an entirely new year, yet he’s not even slightly bigger.

While one has not changed at all, the other has changed quite a bit as Kenai has had a voice change in this movie. I understand when they can’t get back original voice actors for sequels, especially direct-to-DVD ones, but Patrick Dempsey sounds nothing like Joaquin Phoenix.

They’re on their way to some ridge for the spring equinox to get all sorts of different berries to eat.

We have a short run-in with Tug, the big bear from the last movie voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan, who is really only there to plant the idea of romance into Kenai’s head by talking about his girlfriend. Kenai says they don’t need anyone else, but is clearly speaking with a bittersweet taste in his mouth.

We cut to a dream sequence that Kenai is having about a childhood experience. He and Nita were playing around in the snow using spears as pole vaults until Nita stuck the spear in too close to the edge of a floating piece of ice and fell into the water.

She’s saved by Kenai, who brought her up to the top of the nearby waterfall to warm up….What an awful place to warm up. The water rushing in front of the cave has to make it even more freezing in there than it is outside. As Nita tried to keep warm, Kenai gave her an amulet that he had been wearing and they drew stick figure drawings of each other on the cave wall. Nita’s father appeared on a boat below and she left never to see Kenai again I guess.

….Well, there’s your big story behind this character and the amulet. Real impressive, huh? Also, simply giving a girl, especially when you’re children, a wooden amulet is an instant promise of eternal bond? Meanwhile, we cut to another Inuit village where Nita is getting ready for her wedding.

The first scene with Nita is very reminiscent of the scene in Mulan that starts the ‘Bring Honor to us All’ song. She has two women who are never given names or explanations as to who they are to her clamoring over her every detail for the wedding. She tricks them into leaving as she puts on her wedding dress, which is the last thing that she has left of her mom. Oh yeah here’s something Disney doesn’t do very often, Nita’s mother is DEAD! Whawhawhaaaaa?

Her father comes in to talk to her before he gives her away saying how her mother would be proud and whatnot and they walk down the aisle.

It’s here where we see our first and practically only glimpse of Nita’s fiancée, Atka. He stands at the altar and gets no lines. There’s your characterization, people.

However, the great spirits will have none of that and send their mighty wrath upon the wedding by shooting down a lightning bolt which cracks the ground between the bride and groom. The villagers see this as a sign from the great spirits, and we cut to Nita meeting with a shaman about what to do about it.

She’s played by Wanda Sykes, because God forbid we just have serious characters. She invokes the powers of the great spirits who tell her that Nita has already been promised to another in the form of an amulet. In order to break the bond between the two, the couple must go to where the promise originated and burn the amulet. Nita tells the shaman that Kenai’s a bear now. How she knows that is unknown. Maybe village to village gossip? So even if she found him she wouldn’t be able to talk to him.

Also, remember how the spirits were the ones who changed Kenai into a bear? Remember how none of the characters had magical powers? Well, now we have a shaman who has the power to talk to the spirits whenever she wants and give people the ability to talk to animals. Hell, even the village elder from the first movie couldn’t understand what Kenai was saying when he got turned into a bear or do magic stuff. But screw that, we need to speed this movie up so ✸✮ MAGIC✮ ✸!!

She sets off on a journey to find Kenai an– are you kidding me? Not even a minute after she learns that she has to find Kenai….a bear….in the vast wilderness…..she finds, you guessed it, Kenai! In a scene that is reminiscent of when Nala finds Simba from TLK…She’s seen as a hunter by the boys and Kenai tries to protect Koda by attacking her, but finds that it’s Nita and puts her down.

Nita and Kenai reunite for a bit before she explains that she needs his help to burn the amulet that he gave her so that she can get married.

Kenai obviously feels a bit hurt that Nita wants to burn the amulet that he gave her when they were kids and refuses to go with her. She says that neither of them can go on with their lives if they don’t do this, but he still refuses.

….Wait, why can’t he go on with his life? He’s been doing just fine so far. It’s not like bears get married. But she, for some reason, brings up that the great spirits might turn Kenai back into a human again for some reason to help her burn the amulet.

…..What? How?…What? He’s not a bear under punishment anymore. He became a bear of his own volition. Even if they did offer that, why would he care? Unless…..wait, are they using his relationship to Koda as leverage? Are they technically keeping Koda hostage away from Kenai unless he agrees to help? Wow, that’s kinda awful, spirits and Nita.

Koda, hearing this, worries that they won’t be brothers anymore if they do turn him back. So, in order to sate Koda’s worries, he agrees to go to the waterfall to burn the amulet. Flimsy plotpoints are on buffet right now.

The boys and Nita run into the moose, Rutt and Tuke, the comic relief from the previous movie, as they’re also on a mission of love. They’ve been trying to find mates, but the girl moose that they’ve found won’t give them the time of day. Kenai agrees to help them by pretending to attack while Rutt and Tuke pretend to save the girls and win their hearts.

It ends up in an awkward to watch scene where both Kenai and Rutt and Tuke fail miserably at their roles. Kenai does an embarrassing job trying to attack, which is odd because he’s shown that he can seem threatening, and Rutt and Tuke actually end up getting so scared by Kenai’s lame acting that they fall into the river and float away. I get that the scene was meant to be lame, but that was painful.

Kenai ends up getting kicked into a hollow log by the girl moose before they leave as well. In an attempt to get Kenai unstuck from the log, we realize that Nita has a fear of water ever since she nearly drowned as a child. She loses her bag containing the amulet in the river and is too scared to simply lean over and grab it from the water. She has a fit as the bag starts to float away and breaks the log that Kenai was stuck in as she yells at him to retrieve it for her. It goes over a waterfall, but quickly ends up on shore, somehow. As she breathes a sigh of relief, a comic relief raccoon comes over, sifts through her bag and steals the amulet. Why? Because padding.

I’m just now realizing that Kenai doesn’t have his totem around his neck. It was given back to him at the end of the first movie. What happened to it?

Anyway, Kenai, feeling guilty for apparently being responsible for her losing the necklace, goes off in the middle of the night to find the raccoon. He spends all night tracking it down, and then Nita barges in and climbs the tree when Kenai was waiting for the raccoon to fall asleep to take it without bothering them. That’s the way to repay someone for doing a favor to you and working their ass off all night; by doing your best to ruin their hard work and not thanking them at all.

She makes too much noise and alerts the raccoon. He doesn’t notice Nita, but sees the boys. They ask for the necklace back as Nita tries to retrieve it herself. He then calls on his raccoon brethren of about 100 friggin’ raccoons as backup. What exactly happened to everything being afraid of this BEAR? The raccoons pelt him with pinecones until Kenai offers a trade. He has nothing to trade, but Nita has the amulet so who cares?

However, there’s a baby raccoon clinging to the necklace. She shoos him off, but then he cries for his mommy, which alerts the raccoons to Nita’s presence and they start chasing her. I should mention that this scene is very reminiscent of the scene in Tarzan where Jane makes a baby monkey cry because she shoos it off of something she wants and then is chased by hundreds of monkeys. What is going on in this movie? There are so many scenes seemingly taken from other Disney movies, yet the movie itself is boring as hell.

Kenai tells her to climb to the top of the tree while all of the raccoons follow her. He advises her to let go because he’ll catch her, and they send the raccoons flying while sending themselves flying into a snowbank. Then they speak a mile a minute about what just happened while ending on how amazing the other is in a scene that is very reminiscent of a scene in a fellow Disney sequel, Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp’s Adventure. Really, what is going on?

We’re at the halfway point in the movie and I’m still failing to get into it. Nita’s really annoying. She’s pushy, whiny, selfish and just an overall chore to watch. Koda’s annoyed me since the first movie and he’s no better here. Kenai’s okay, but his different voice and constant slapstick gags get old fast. The subplot with Rutt and Tuke is just embarrassing to watch. I didn’t mind them much in the first movie, but they’re pretty awful here. They’re there to push the message of love and extend the runtime. That’s about it.

As for the plot, it’s very thin. It’s obvious as hell that Nita’s not going to end up marrying Atka especially since he’s not even a character so much as a picture with a name. He has no personality and no dialogue thus far. She’s gonna fall for Kenai, and, if that shaman was any indication, she’ll likely get turned into a girl bear and they’ll live happily ever after.

Anyhoo, we meet back up with Rutt and Tuke who are still trying to court the girl moose. They’re rubbing themselves with dead leaves, mud and, thanks to a prank from Tuke, poop, in order to attract them with scent.

Poop jokes? Really? That’s what we’re reduced to? Thanks, Disney.

Kenai tells them that he has another idea, but Nita explains that his last plan sucked. Kenai then decides to brush off the whole situation and go to the falls, but Nita decides that she wants to stay which is completely against the way that she has been acting this entire time. She’s been hell-bent on burning that amulet at the falls since she arrived, not willing to put up with any nonsense that interrupts them. Now she wants to delay her trip?

Nita sends Koda out to the girls to act all cute and cuddly even though bears, ya know, eat moose. They’re all in love with the little guy, and Koda says that he’s playing hide and seek with his two best friends. Rutt and Tuke then come out asking if they’ve seen their bear friend. Koda comes out and they act all cute with him, tickling him and laughing and whatnot.

The girls are all impressed with how good they are with the kid. They finally look like they’re going to get a date, but Rutt, for reasons beyond my understanding, suddenly blurts out poetry which makes him look like an idiot. Tuke knocks him down and walks way with both girls stating that his brother was hit on the head as a child and Rutt runs to follow. Bros before hoes doesn’t apply to moose apparently.

Here’s my entry in the ‘most photogenic moose’ contest.

Nita and Kenai basically flirt about how she was able to hook them up but he wasn’t and they ignore Koda’s pleas for attention at impressing them with how good he acted during the plan.

Kenai explains that the falls are close as they only have to go a short ways and cross the river to get there by lunchtime the next day. Obviously the whole water-phobia thing comes into play so Nita suggests instead of going through the river that they climb a bunch of mountains and crap to avoid it.

Kenai and Koda practically laugh at the stupid route she suggested, and they vote to go their way, but she refuses like a stubborn child. Koda flips a fish out of the river for lunch which lands in Nita’s hands and makes her fall into the river. She flips out and immediately makes her way to shore.

Koda believes that she’s afraid of fish so Kenai and Koda quickly start laughing at her for it. Koda even takes the fish that he caught and does a puppet show about how scared she is of fish.

Wow, how completely insensitive and assholeish of you guys. First of all, she’s freaked out at the concept of water three times by now. That’s not a big enough hint that she’s afraid of water?

Second, even if she was afraid of fish, that’s no reason to act like an ass.

Third, this water-phobia thing is getting old, and it doesn’t even make complete sense. I can understand if she didn’t display outright signs of trauma after she was rescued as a child, but she left that scene ON A BOAT! If she’s so traumatized by water to the point where she won’t even lean over and grab a really important bag out of a slow as hell moving river, how did she easily get into a boat and paddle away? She’s so scared of water I really have to wonder how she handles bathing or gentle rainshowers.

Kenai realizes that they’re upsetting her, so he yells at Koda to stop it. He doesn’t explain why, especially since he was laughing with him a minute ago, he just sighs in disappointment and goes to comfort Nita. He apologizes, and she explains her phobia of water and how she can’t go through the river because of it. Kenai says that they got through this much together so they’ll get through that together as well.

Thus begins the ‘Koda Neglect montage’. Basically we have a montage of Nita and Kenai flirting and having fun together as they travel, while Koda is either treated like crap or completely ignored the entire way. Kenai stops Koda from walking on a log bridge to let Nita go first, he and Nita completely block Koda’s view of a mama bird feeding her baby birds, they nearly KILL HIM by not noticing or caring when he nearly falls off of a mammoth that they’re riding, barely able to hold onto the tail, and every other scene with Koda shows him being completely ignored.

The song accompanying this montage is also okay, but it’s not very memorable.

The montage ends upon reaching the riverside. Kenai gives Nita a ride on his back to cross the river, and, after going under the water and seeing turtles, she’s completely over her fear of water to the point where she actually gets off Kenai and swims to shore on her own.

What utter and complete bull. Yes, facing your fears helps you get over them, but a quick dip in the river and seeing some turtles shouldn’t be enough to completely cure you of a crippling phobia that you’ve had since you were a child that was caused by a traumatic near-death experience. It’s also a completely anticlimactic and stupid end to that insipid plotpoint.

Kenai and Nita walk away on the other side of the river, and Koda watches them with sadness as he continues to get ignored. They’ve been ignoring him in his entirety all day. I’d be surprised if they even realize he’s still traveling with them. What a good big brother Kenai turned out to be.

As Koda broods, we get another appearance by Rutt who has also been ditched by his brother for those floozies from before. He tells Koda to watch out because his brother might do the same thing to him. Rutt and Tuke; good for stupid comic relief and giving awful messages to children.

Koda doesn’t believe that Kenai would ever ditch him, but obviously has doubts.

Koda crosses the river and eavesdrops on Kenai and Nita who are laughing and talking by a fire not even realizing that Koda could’ve drowned behind them eons ago and no one would’ve been the wiser. I have a feeling these two are somehow the ancestors of the parents from Rugrats.

Nita asks Kenai if he’s ever considered going back to being a human. He says that he’s thought about it, and before you can say ‘obvious misunderstanding’, Koda interrupts and says that Kenai is going to leave him for Nita and become a human again and he runs away. Kenai and Nita sit on their asses long enough for him to get a good head start.

So yeah now they’re ripping off their own movie. Koda ran away in the last movie too, also in the snowy mountains.

Kenai and Nita search for him by following his tracks in the snow. Even though Kenai showed amazing tracking skills with those raccoons, he completely misses the footprint that leads into an ice cave, but Nita finds it. She also fails to tell Kenai because the plot said that Nita and Koda needed to have a heart to heart.

Nita finds Koda hiding in a hole in the wall of the ice cave and tries to bring Koda back, claiming it’s not safe, but he refuses. As the cave starts to collapse, he jumps into Nita’s arms. Well, that’s kinda what she meant by unsafe….

They manage to escape, but Koda gets pinned under a bunch of ice. Nita saves him, but flings them over the cliff in the process. They dangle over the edge while an avalanche occurs due to the collapse. They somehow ride the broken cliff piece on top of the avalanche (rocks do that?) but inevitably get buried. Kenai spots them and surprisingly only yells out Koda’s name. As he digs them out, again, all he says is Koda’s name. Ya know, you can show concern for both of them. There’s no need to play favorites just because Koda overreacted prematurely and you’re a terrible brother.

Koda explains that he believes Kenai’s going to leave him to go off with Nita and become human. He said he does miss being human, but they’re brothers and he’d never leave him. If Koda had just let Kenai finish his sentence before, this whole thing could’ve been avoided….

Hearing this, Nita gets all whiny. How did we go from constant slapstick and stupidity to butthurt city and stupidity?

We cut back to Rutt and Tuke where they’re watching the northern lights. Rutt’s off on his own while the girls are cuddling with Tuke who asks Rutt to get them some twigs, and Rutt chokes back tears and agrees to go. Hearing that he’s crying, the girls instantly gravitate to his sensitivity and cuddle with him. These girls are more easily swayed than girls who thrive on teen romance novels.

They reach the falls and see the lights as they prepare to view the spring equinox.

Oh did I forget to mention that in this universe the spring equinox is a magical event made by the great spirits? It happens in an instant. Yup, the great spirits turn winter into spring in mere moments, melting feet of snow, growing grass, blooming flowers and more. Because gradually doing that stuff over the course of a few weeks wouldn’t have meshed well with the movie.

Koda brings up connecting with his dead mom through the lights as Nita mentions her dead mom as well. We get some cliché line about how you don’t need to see the spirits to know that the people that you have lost are within your heart forever. The speech couldn’t be more cliché if it were on a Hallmark card.

Despite this talk about spirits and dead relatives and this being called BROTHER Bear, I guess dead brothers need not apply to this conversation because Kenai never brings up his dead brother from the previous movie, Sitka.

The guy dies for you, turns you into a bear to teach you a life lesson, and is a friggin’ eagle, which is awesome, yet you can’t even give him a verbal cameo? Nice. I will give some slack here as to why Kenai’s other brother, Denahi, makes no appearance as his voice actor committed suicide before this movie was created. However, he can still be mentioned.

They start the burning and the lights vanish. After the amulet is gone, Nita tries to talk to the boys, but finds that the spell broke with the burnt amulet. This creates a mirror of the same scene from the last movie where Kenai becomes human and is hurt when he can’t understand Koda’s words. She tearfully says goodbye while Kenai and Koda simply roar and grunt at her.

We get our first sad song as they go their separate ways. It’s actually a very good song. Much more memorable than the songs we’ve been given. It has a nice somber tone and melody that fits the mood well. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as ‘No way out’ but I still like it.

Koda and Kenai reach some food while Nita reunites with her family and prepares for her wedding.

Koda talks with Kenai about Nita. He asks if her gave her the amulet because he loved her and he says it was a long time ago so it doesn’t matter. Kenai goes off to sleep to get to the ridge with all the berries that they were going to early in the morning.

Koda speaks to the spirits, moreso his mom, telling her that he’ll be fine on his own and that they should turn Kenai back into a human so that he can be happy. The spirit lights….flicker for some reason and we cut to Kenai waking up. They kinda trick you into thinking that the spirits did turn him back, but he’s still a bear. Rutt and Tuke inform him that Koda ran off to find Nita and bring her back to him to make him happy. Kenai freaks out because Koda will be killed by hunters the instant that he sets foot in the village.

We cut to Nita getting ready for her wedding again. She’s having doubts this time and tells her father than she can’t marry Atka. Aw, but we got to know him so well and fell in love with him during that 32 seconds of screentime with no dialogue or backstory. And we know she truly loves him because she never talks about any aspects of him whatsoever and really never brought him up at all. Such a shame.

They’re interrupted by screams as Koda runs around being chased by the villagers. Nita tries to stop them to no avail. We finally get dialogue from Atka a full hour into this hour and 13 minute long (including credits) movie. However, we don’t learn much about him besides he’s like every man in the village in that if a bear entered it, they’d want to kill it. Kenai bursts onto the scene roaring to get them away from Koda. They run away with Kenai getting grazed on the back by a spear, but don’t worry, the wound’s gone mere seconds later. Continuity!

Kenai sticks Koda in a tree and tells him to stay low while he drives them away. Despite doing his best to hide, other hunters catch Koda anyway while laughing like stereotypical villains.

Rutt and Tuke surprisingly show up to save the day, but end up getting caught up in a tree as they try to jump on the hunters. Conveniently, the tree breaks and falls on the hunters, leaving Koda unharmed and the girls once again impressed.

Kenai tries to run away from Atka, but he can’t shake him. Kenai jumps onto a cliff, and Atka throws his torch on it to spook him while jumping on him with his spear. The two fight while Nita catches up to them. She tries to get them to stop, but only Kenai does. Atka throws the torch in Kenai’s face and pushes him over the edge of the cliff. I guess this scene could resemble the scene in The Lion King where Scar did the same thing, but not exactly.

Nita scolds Atka for what he’s done and goes to Kenai’s aid. Yes, Atka. You’re awful for doing what you were taught to do your entire life and has never been seen as wrong until this very moment since the bear was your fiancée’s friend. Oh and protecting the village from what appeared to everyone else as a violent rampaging bear. You bastard!

Nita and Koda go to Kenai’s side. He’s supposedly hurt but I don’t see how. Koda and Kenai are still speaking to each other in roars and grunts since Nita can’t understand them. It’s odd. This scene is the only emotional scene to me only because of the subtlety involved with not being able to understand them.

Kenai puts out his paw and Nita matches it with her hand, again, like Tarzan, and Kenai puts it to his heart to say ‘I love you.’ Eugh. Nita admits her love for him too, and the great spirits make a cameo again. Apparently they’re loading the ‘Make Kenai human’ program as Koda tells them what he asked them to do and that it’s okay because he just wants Kenai to be happy again. Kenai tells Nita that he can’t become human and leave Koda, but Nita tells him that she can join him instead – BOOM! CALLED IT! NITA → BEAR RESOLUTION!

Nita’s father comes and asks her if this is what she truly wants. She says yes, and he gives her his blessing. What a cool dad. Interracial marriage still isn’t cool to some people, but he’s letting his daughter turn into a bear to marry a bear. We can all learn a lesson here, people. It involves bestiality in some way I think, but it’s still an important lesson to learn.

Also, since when do people order the spirits around? Last I checked, they do what they want when they want unless they feel like giving you a choice. What, is Koda’s mom pulling strings up there?

I’m sorry to say that, while the intro almost sounds like a remix, we don’t get a reprise of ‘Transformation’ from the last movie, which sucks because that’s one of my favorite instrumental songs in the Disney franchise. Instead we get some mish mash dramatic music that sounds cobbled together…..

Nita looks….kinda weird as a bear, and we cut to their bear wedding with bear friends and the village merging together. Right, the villagers who were laughing maniacally at catching a bear cub are now cheering at a bear wedding. Okay, movie. Atka’s nowhere to be found here, by the way. I guess he got burned at the stake for trying to kill a bear which is now seen as a friend. Damn that bastard who only got about two minutes of total screen time and about two full lines!

This is a legit issue with me, though, because we’re left thinking that Atka’s an asshole when he’s supposedly a really nice and honorable guy. They could’ve resolved this a lot better. Have Atka be understanding like a good friend. If Nita really did love him enough to go through all this to marry him, he can’t be all that bad.

Surprisingly, Eagle-Sitka does make a brief appearance at the very end though.

The raccoons from before are also there to cheer them on for reasons beyond my understanding. Why would you cheer on characters that stole what you believed was your stuff and flung you across the forest by a tree?

We end on the great spirits changing the cave wall drawing of Kenai and Nita as humans together to bears. Because little details like that need to be changed by great and powerful spirits.

The end.

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Wow was that a big disappointment. To it’s credit, they could’ve done a lot worse, but what they did do still wasn’t really good. The movie’s a bore. It’s predictable as hell, the tone is so much more different than the original, Kenai and Nita’s backstory as well as the story of Atka and Nita aren’t fleshed out enough or, in the latter’s case, at all.

Why did Kenai love her back then? Because they played for a minute and he rescued her as she almost drowned? Why were they best friends? What did that amulet mean to Kenai? He’s the one who was wearing it before he gave it to Nita. It must’ve meant something to him. What was the story with Atka? Was it an arranged marriage thing like Pocahontas and Kokoum? What’s his backstory? How’d she meet him? Does he have any form of personality beyond hunting and standing at the altar? Why’d she never see Kenai again after that incident at the falls? How’d her mom die?

This is one of those movies that had nothing to really build on. The story decisively concluded. You could’ve done something with it, but why’d they have to go the cliché angle of making a sequel for the sake of giving everyone a love interest? Except Koda, I guess, but now he has an older sister/mom figure.

Brother Bear is really a movie that shouldn’t have been built on, however. Other than possibly showing us a grown-up Koda having some adventure or learning an important life lesson, there’s just not much to be done here. The story has a solid beginning, middle and most of all, end. No one was yearning for Kenai to get married after that.

Nita is annoying during the first half, but gets gradually more tolerable as time goes on. I never reach a point where I actually like her, but she was reaching good annoyance levels in the first half, so at least she avoided the dangers of my wrath.

On a technical aspect, the art and animation is very good for a Disquel, even if they seem to be going overboard with the color saturation, but not quite as good as the previous movie. It’s Direct-to-DVD-ish while not being TV-series-ish like Hunchback 2 or Aladdin 2 or 3. Also, we don’t have nearly as many epic views or sights to look at, if any, during this movie unlike the first one where practically everything was gorgeous.

The music was also better than most Disney sequels, but nothing particularly memorable to me outside of that one sad song. Phil Collins doesn’t return to do anymore work on this movie, which is disappointing.

The acting is good, but I can’t mesh Patrick Dempsey with Kenai. He just doesn’t sound right.

Bottom Line: As a movie, it’s just okay. As a Disquel, personally, I’d skip it, especially if you were a fan of the previous movie. It’s a predictable, confusing and lifeless movie meant to shoehorn in some love stories into the Brother Bear universe. The writing’s not very good and there are many scenes that seem almost ripped directly from other Disney movies. It has some moments that are legitimately good, and it didn’t make me seriously angry, but it’s absolutely nothing that you’d need to watch unless you like watching Mary Sue Disney fanfiction come to life. It could’ve been much worse, but I still can’t recommend it.

Recommended Audience: I think we actually get a fairly subtle sex joke. At the beginning of the movie, Rutt and Tuke are being chased by a buffalo or something while looking for a mate, and Rutt says that she looked like a moose from behind….yeah. Other than that, it’s your basically sterile Disney sequel. 5+

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Dissecting the Disquels: Cinderella III – A Twist in Time

Plot: Cinderella has gotten her happily ever after, but her stepsister, Anastasia, hasn’t. She wants what Cinderella has and gets a lucky break when she gets her hands on the Fairy Godmother’s wand. The evil stepmother takes it from her and reverses time back to the search of the owner of the glass slipper. When Anastasia gets a turn, she magically makes her foot the right size, allowing her to get engaged to the somewhat confused prince, leaving Cinderella devastated. However, she’s not going to give up her prince without a fight, and she’ll need to hope that Anastasia sees the real meaning behind true love before it’s too late.

Breakdown: I pretty much had the same thought as everyone else when this movie came out. ‘Cinderella’s a TRILOGY now? And there’s time travel? Wat?’ I really wasn’t looking forward to this movie when I reached it on my Disquel list, but is it really as bad as it seems?

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We start off with Cinderella singing about how perfect her life is with her husband The Artist Formerly Known as Prince as she turns around and gives us an expression like she just farted….I’m not really kidding. I know she’s smiling, but…

Come on….

The Prince comes up to give her her shoes. He tells her that the mice were using her shoes as boats as he dumps some water out of one of them and slips it on her foot. Yeah, don’t dry the damn thing or anything. Just put her wet soggy shoe on her foot.

Mid-song we cut to the evil stepsisters cleaning the house and doing chores since Cinderella’s married into royalty and doesn’t deal with that crap anymore. This song includes a segment about how Anastasia wants to find a prince of her own to marry….Wha, what about the baker?! I know he was apparently so unimportant that he didn’t even get a name, but he was an integral part of Anastasia’s supposed storyline. Was the last movie just so bad that we’re reconning all of it?

What is seriously up with the fascination with Anastasia anyway? Why does she get two stories while the other stepsister, Drizella, gets nothing? Is she just an irredeemable bitch? And, again, why the hell should we care if either one of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters gets a happy ending? They tried to do that in the last movie, and I wasn’t anymore rooting for her to get laid by the end of her segment than I was at the beginning.

Anastasia follows Cinderella and the Prince to their anniversary party 

held by the mice and her fairy godmother. As they continue singing about what a perfect life they have (Something everyone can relate to I’m sure) Anastasia finds out that Cinderella got her perfect life through magic, and, just as if it were written in the script, the fairy godmother clumsily flings her wand into the forest right in front of Anastasia’s face.

She runs back to Drizella and Bitch (Might as well name her that) to show them, but they don’t believe her. The fairy godmother shows up to take the wand back. How she knew Anastasia had it is beyond me. In a scuffle to get the wand, Anastasia accidentally turns the godmother into a statue.

With wand in hand, Bitch decides to turn back time to the shoe fitting to ensure that Cinderella doesn’t end up being found and marrying the Prince. Magic: Anyone can do it properly because shut up.

When the duke enters to place the glass slipper on the girls’ feet, Bitch uses her wand again to shrink Anastasia’s foot to the right size. Oh nice, Drizella gets no chance? Just give the Prince to Anastasia? Pfft.

As Anastasia and the others are about to leave, Cinderella tries to plead her case but Bitch stops her. Cinderella shows the other glass slipper as proof that she was the one who danced with the prince, but Bitch says it was just a dream and breaks the slipper.

Cinderella watches in despair as they leave and starts singing a somber song about how the ball was supposedly just a dream. It’s a pretty nice song even if the visuals are a tad cheesy.

Jaq consoles Gus about the situation, and he says that the prince would know Cinderella by looking at her if he saw her since they danced together. Good point. That just begs the question as to why the prince never thought to have a mock sketch made up to search for the girl from the ball instead of hoping no one else has her shoe size.

Cinderella overhears their conversation and instantly perks up with determination to go to the palace, see the prince and prove that the other night wasn’t a dream.

As Cinderella sneaks into the castle pretending to be the royal mouse catcher, the prince meets Anastasia. He proves to not be as stupid as I feared since he instantly realizes that Anastasia’s not the girl he danced with at the ball and politely apologizes before sending them home. However, Bitch will have none of that and casts a spell over him that makes him forget Cinderella and have Anastasia replace her in his memories. He turns around and proposes to her and she wildly accepts while sticking the ring on the wrong hand.

Jaq and Gus witness this and go to warn Cinderella who is confronting the prince. Cinderella tries to get the prince to recognize her, but he can’t escape the spell so he doesn’t understand. She’s dragged away for royal mouse catcher business before she can talk further.

Jaq and Gus tell her that Bitch took the wand from the fairy godmother and put a spell over the prince, so Cinderella concocts a plan to get him back.

The king asks for a moment alone with Anastasia where he talks about his wife the, I guess, dead queen who died from Disneyitis. He gives her a sea shell that was the queen’s most prized possession as it was the sea shell that both she and the king were reaching for at the same time, and when their hands touched he knew it was true love…..

Okay, I want to take a time out here for a minute and showcase just how drastically the king changed his stances on marriage in this movie.

From what I remember of the first movie, and from what we’re shown at the very beginning of this one, the king mostly treated marriage as a necessity that all royalty needed, and that love wasn’t really important as long as you just get married especially to someone of great breeding and refinement. He vocalizes this after the time reversal then completely changes his tune after the prince asks him to remember how he fell in love with the queen while looking at a ten foot tall painting of her. He stays in this lovey dovey mood the rest of the movie and keeps looking at various paintings of her…..

Are you saying he just completely forgot how much he loved and cared for his wife and reduced marriage to something so empty and only remembered that it was about love when his son asked him to remember the wife he seemingly adored so much that he’d have giant paintings of her everywhere? Huh?

Anastasia sings a reprise of the song she was singing before about how she’s found a man who loves her and how her dreams will come true when she marries the prince. I really don’t like how we’re being force-fed this BS with Anastasia. She has no character growth seriously, she’s still a bitchy she-beast, she just acts dreamy and somewhat kind when she’s in love. And I keep finding the idea of ‘marriage to hot guy=all dreams now true’ to be very lame.

For anyone worrying about character growth with Drizella, don’t worry, she’s still a jerk.

Cinderella sees Drizella screwing around with the wand to make jewelry and stuff (without saying the magic words, mind you) while Bitch locks the wand away in a drawer and puts the key in her pocket. What was wrong with keeping it on her? It’s probably safer since no one would ever dream of touching her…

Anastasia returns while still all dreamy and has second thoughts about what they’re doing. She even says the prince could love her without the spell. Yeah, he looked practically disgusted when he saw you and has shown nothing but indifference towards you even with the spell. I’m sure he’d fall head over heels…

In order the get the wand, Cinderella sends Jaq and Gus in to nab it from Bitch’s pocket. They accidentally set Lucifer (the cat) on fire, and, in the ruckus from his freaking out, they nab the key…..Hey you know what else I noticed? That cat from the second movie, Pish-Posh or whatever is nowhere to be seen in this movie so far. Huh. Maybe they did completely retcon it.

They break a dish or vase or something in the commotion and are about to call a housekeeper when one arrives at the door. It’s Cinderella with a bonnet shadowing her face. Why she felt the need to do this is beyond me. Obviously Jaq and Gus got into the room just fine, surely they’d be able to get out with no problem. Jaq and Gus are also about to open the drawer while Bitch and the others are still in the room.

What the hell is she thinking? What a dumb plan. She should’ve just gotten the key, waited for them to leave the room, went in and gotten the wand without them noticing. Bitch didn’t have the wand or the key anymore so unless she wanted to grab an axe and rip apart the dresser, she would be screwed.

Bitch recognizes Cinderella and outs her disguise, but Cinderella says she’ll never get away with her plan as she runs off with Jaq and Gus, guards and Lucifer in tow.

She manages to get the wand back, but can’t complete the reversal spell on the prince and gets taken by the guards while the wand is returned to Bitch. Cinderella tries to convince the prince, touches his hand (a spark when touching hands is a theme of this movie) and he feels something, but doesn’t break free from the spell as she’s dragged away. Drizella yells to her that they won, and the prince wonders what she meant, but she just says it’s nothing while Bitch shoos the prince away.

Bitch tells the guard to banish Cinderella even though I have no clue why everyone’s obeying her like she’s already royalty. I know her daughter’s set to marry the prince but that doesn’t make her a queen-in-law. Even if it did, they’re not married yet.

The mice drag the prince into a sewing room to talk to him, and they sing about how Cinderella is really the girl that he danced with at the ball and that Bitch put him under a spell to think Anastasia’s the girl he danced with instead. They also say that Cinderella’s been banished by Bitch and it’s up to him to save her.

Prince: “Magic…..That explains everything.” Magic; the deus ex machina of everything. Also, I love how open and willing he is to accept all of this. Talking mice and intelligent birds are telling him through song that his future mother-in-law cast a spell on him to marry her daughter and the real girl that he danced with at the ball is some crazy lady he met earlier. Most people would seek psychiatric help after that but in Disney movies it’s completely believable.

And they even acknowledge how ridiculous this is. Heh, I like this movie.

I love the look he gives the King when he says that the bluebirds weren’t talking. It’s like “Daaaaaaddd, of course the BLUEBIRDS weren’t talking; just the mice!”

The prince manages to escape the castle to find Cinderella even though his father tried repeatedly to get him to stop. When the prince gets beyond the gate, he dreamily says to let him go……What is the king on exactly? He’s flip-flopping between emotions so feverishly.

Cinderella boards the ship out of the kingdom and reprises her song about dreams this time in a sad sense since she now thinks it was all a dream. Truthfully, some good does come out of this scenario; she doesn’t have to deal with Bitch anymore.

The prince is catching up to the ship, but the ship is departing from port so he decides to take one final leap from the top of a lighthouse or whatever that is. However, his horse won’t make the jump so he stops suddenly, throwing the prince into the ship as he slides down the sail with a knife and swings down ropes. Mythbusters pretty much destroyed the thing with the sails and knife so I’m going to dock you for that movi—oh yeah this is a movie with talking mice, magic wands and glass footwear. Carry on.

The prince reunites with Cinderella, and, with a touch of their hands, he knows he’s found the right girl this time. However, there’s still 20 minutes left in the movie so it can’t be that simple.

Bitch won’t stand for this, and she soon escapes with her daughters as Cinderella and the prince escape.

Cinderella gets ready for her wedding when Bitch emerges from the shadows and reveals her newest plan. She’s going to let Cinderella get married to the prince, only the Cinderella that he’ll marry is actually Anastasia under a spell to look like Cinderella. Couldn’t go the extra mile to change her voice to Cinderella’s though.

Bitch uses the wand to send Cinderella away and ironically transports her to the center of a growing gross pumpkin that grows to an evil version of her carriage from the night of the ball and uses thorny vines to force a nearby horse to pull it. In order to ensure that Cinderella stays out of the picture, she sends a humanized Lucifer to drive the carriage.

We get a pretty suspenseful scene as Cinderella, Jaq and Gus try to stop the carriage as it’s moving. While Jaq and Gus nearly get thrown off several times, Cinderella manages to throw Lucifer off of the carriage where he somehow turns back into a cat again, I dunno. They regain control of the carriage and pull the pin connecting it to the horse, but they’re approaching a cliff so they all jump on the horse’s back just in time.

Cinderella races to the wedding on horseback, and we can only hope the old trope of stopping the wedding either before they say “I do” or after the minister asks if anyone has any objections is still alive.

Back at the wedding, which I can’t believe got arranged so quickly, but okay, Anastasia is still showing signs of unease about the upcoming marriage because she believes the prince doesn’t feel anything for her when they touch hands. This is especially uneasy when he whispers “my one and only Cinderelly” to her during the ceremony, since the first time he heard her name was from Jaq.

So which one will it be? Cinderella stopping the ceremony or Anastasia not going through with it?

Well, surprisingly, it’s Anastasia.

Okay, we get it. She’s a good person now for some reason. I really just wish we had more actual development with her. You can’t just flip a switch between dress-ripping she-demon and romantic fairy tale protagonist.

It is nice most of the time to see a mean character eventually see the error of their ways and turn good, and this is a way better show of that than the second movie’s third section, but still. Oh and let me guess, she’s going to randomly find someone she loves before the end credits, right?

Bitch won’t stand for this either and both she and the royal guards head for Anastasia. Bitch causes havoc in the palace with her dark magic…by the way, the fairy godmother must not have needed a lot of practice for her job. It seems like anyone who grabs ahold of the wand and knows the magic words can do anything they want properly. Look at her. She’s like friggin’ Maleficent without the dragon form and she’s only had the wand for a day.

She’s about to use her magic on Anastasia for disobeying her, but Cinderella stands in front of her to protect her. Oh yeah I’m so sure she’d never do a thing to YOU of all people. She’s always thought of you as a precious little dainty flower.

Obviously, Bitch still wants to attack anyway, but the prince jumps in the way with his sword which reflects the magic back at Bitch and Drizella, sending them to some dungeon or maybe it’s their house’s basement I dunno, and they’ve turned into frogs. Kinda a lame battle, really, but I guess Cinderella’s not a movie meant for battle sequences and dark magic.

Anastasia grabs the wand since it fell on the floor after Bitch and Drizella disappeared and turns herself back to normal again. She tries to return the shell that the king gave her as a wedding gift stating she doesn’t deserve it, but the king lets her keep it and tells her that everyone deserves true love.

They return the fairy godmother to her non-stone state, Cinderella reunites with the prince again and they get married. The fairy godmother asks if she wants them to return to their old lives where they were already married for over a year and none of this mess ever happened, but they seemingly don’t need to since they don’t even remember that life. Hope nothing important happened in that year.

And then we zoom out as they kiss, we see the castle one last time and that’s the end.

Well, we do see in a final shot that Bitch and Drizella turn back to normal only they’re now tasked with being housekeepers.

The en–….Wait, Anastasia didn’t randomly find her true love? *fast forwards through end credits*…..HONESTLY? They didn’t follow that huge cliché? Wow. I’m blown away.

Now, I’m about to get so much crap for this, I know it…..but……this movie…..I liked this movie.

In fact, I’d say it’s very much on the same level as the original.

Maybe even better…..

Hold back the firing squad, let me explain. Looking back on it, the first Cinderella isn’t all that fantastic to me. Sad but true. As a kid, I never was much interested in movies like that. I was more interested in The Lion King and Aladdin and movies with huge battles and cool fantasy worlds.

When I really think about it, I don’t see the big fuss around the original movie anyway. A girl has a life that is terrible, true. Some bitch married her dad, her dad died, her original mom’s probably also dead from the Disneyitis epidemic and she’s forced to basically be a slave in her own house under the command of said bitch and her two slag-sisters.

She dreams of a better life beyond this, but does nothing about it. A fairy godmother takes pity on her situation and uses her magic to get her to a big ball being held by the king to find a suitable bride for his son, the prince who is never named. (And I know he’s probably Prince Charming, but he is literally never named. Even in the credits of this movie he’s credited as The Prince.) Heck, the mice are the ones who even make her first dress for her, and they also are the ones to get her out of the attic in the end.

She goes to the ball, dances, falls in love as fast as, well, a Disney Princess, runs off while leaving her confusing footwear choice behind and returns to her daily life.

She partakes in a shoe fitting and gets married. The end. That’s all there is to that movie. And you know what I get from it? Everyone around her is being much more proactive in Cinderella’s life than Cinderella is. She’s basically a completely reactive character in the first movie.

Cinderella could easily decide to leave and start a life on her own. I mean, her Wiki even says she’s not 16, not even 18 but 19 years old. Plenty old enough to tell her step-mother to shove a broom up her ass and go live a life of her own. What’s she going to do about it? I doubt she’d do much. The only real method of force that she has outside of emotional torment is a fat sadistic cat. And her father had to have left her something in his will, unless he was an ass too.

Instead she waited around and acted like a doormat until something magical fell into her lap. Even when this happened, she still returned to her awful life with no intentions of leaving until the prince decided he liked the dance so much that he wanted to marry the girl he danced with and sent people off to fetch her.

I’m not victim blaming, her situation is still awful, but really the only reason she found the will to escape it was because she finally found a boyfriend. Cinderella seems like a really strong person otherwise. It’s like she didn’t have a purpose to leave until she met the prince.

She gets whisked away, there are no repercussions for the villains, there’s no real depth to the prince and Cinderella’s relationship, there’s no real depth to the prince barring that he’s difficult to marry off without a dance party.

It’s a good dose of fantasy for young girls, and it is always nice to have that light in your heart that says one day your dreams could all come true at the drop of a hat, but that’s about it.

This movie has action, suspense, adds depth to Cinderella (makes her pretty damn proactive and a little badass to be honest), the prince and their relationship as a whole even if it’s not a whole lot to go on barring the hand thing.

I will admit, the stuff with Anastasia becoming somewhat nice and basically being turned into not just a protagonist but also kinda the protagonist of this movie is very jarring and a little off-putting. However, it’s huge character development that is not outside of the realms of realism. Maybe they didn’t completely retcon the second movie and that was supposed to be somewhat of a buffer to how she is here and she and the Baker just didn’t work out.

The truly evil ones of the movie actually get some comeuppance, becoming frogs then housekeepers. Cinderella and the prince actually do stuff to fight for their love. It doesn’t fall into the same cliché pitfalls like giving Anastasia a love interest out of nowhere just to ensure that everyone good has someone to bang or Cinderella stopping the wedding before the “I do”’s.

It also has pretty good art and animation, and good music, surprising for a Disney sequel let alone the third in a trilogy. Never cringed to any of the songs, in fact most were pretty memorable and well-made. Only exception might be the song that Jaq and Gus sing, which is still pretty good but bordering on lame during the chorus and reprise. Good voice acting, good pacing, a pretty good story, good dialogue, and the time travel thing didn’t feel that forced or contrived.

Bottom Line: Is it a masterpiece? Definitely not. Is it an enjoyable movie? Yes. Cinderella purists or even Disney purists as a whole may not enjoy this movie because it literally rewrites the entire first movie’s ending and even retcons the second movie. If you have the same opinion on the first movie that I did, you’d have a decent chance of enjoying this all the more as well. If the original is very near and dear to your heart, but you’re open for continuing the story and giving a Disquel a chance, this is the one to see (not the second one. Please don’t watch that)

Recommended Audience: Glass footwear is a dangerous option. You have to put them in the dishwasher and the slightest trip could make you slit open an artery, but nothing offensive beyond that. E for everyone!

Final Notes: That tagline in the poster makes no sense. The slipper DID still fit her feet, it’s just that Bitch used a spell to make the slipper also fit Anastasia’s foot without letting Cinderella even try. Come on poster guys, pay attention.

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Dissecting the Disquels: Pocahontas 2 – Journey to a New World

Plot: Due to Ratcliffe’s lies about what happened in the previous movie, the king has decided to send out an armada and declare war on the natives. Ratcliffe has supposedly killed John Smith to keep him from talking, and now it’s up to John Rolfe to try and mend bridges by bringing the chief of Pocahontas’s tribe to England as an ambassador.

Pocahontas goes in his place, but London is a much stranger world than what she’s used to. She’ll have to learn to dress and act accordingly or else she’ll have no chance of stopping the attack. Meanwhile, she develops a closer relationship with John Rolfe.

Breakdown: The original Pocahontas movie was both greatly loved and greatly ridiculed for being so far off from the original story of Pocahontas. Pocahontas was around 11 or 12 years old in the actual story, and John Smith was merely a friend. There’s nothing implying any sort of romantic entanglement between him and Pocahontas. That as well as various other aspects, like John Smith wasn’t nearly that attractive in real life, were badly historically inaccurate. Oh and magic leaves/trees/wind.

This movie, shockingly enough, is closer to the original story. However, there are still numerous changes in order to fuse properly with the first movie.

Though it is mentioned that “several” years have passed since the events of the first movie, no actual number of years is given. However, the original story states she was about 21 when she went to England. Since Pocahontas was 16 in the original movie and about 11 in the actual story, she’s probably around 26 in this movie, which is actually supposed to be a few years after her death.

John Rolfe goes to Jamestown to talk to Pocahontas and her tribe. She decides to go with him as an ambassador to stop war on her people and to take the place of her father since he refused to go. In the actual story, she was already married to John Rolfe and had a kid with him before going to England.

Also, I believe she just went to England simply to live there. There was no great mission, though her marriage to Rolfe did create a nice period of peace between the settlers and her tribe. She also changed her name to Rebecca somewhere between Smith and Rolfe.

The thing about John Smith faking his death and not contacting Pocahontas is accurate. The circumstances behind it may be different, but it did happen.

Okay, so “closer to the original story” does not mean “entirely accurate.” This is Disney; you have to give them quite a bit of elbow room.

Now onto the movie. I wasn’t in love with original movie, but I watched it several times as kid. I liked the songs and art more than anything. The actual story and characters were mostly okay to me. Really preachy and cheesy, though.

And this sequel……is surprisingly decent. It’s nothing amazing, but it seems like a decent sequel to the original movie at least for a direct-to-video sequel. And it’s a decent closing to Pocahontas’s story……….beyond all the genocide and dying at age 22 and whatnot. People who really shipped Pocasmith © were pretty damn pissed at this movie, though. But let’s get to that later.

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The movie starts out in London where we see John Smith running away from a bunch of soldiers on the rooftops. He eventually slips, and Ratcliffe appears and slams his foot down on Smith’s hand sending him into the waters below. Oh no! John Smith died by falling into the water and we never see him surface nor do we see his body. That must mean he is dead! There is absolutely no chance that they are screwing with us. This is 100% true events.

I should mention that the only voice change in the entire movie is with John Smith. I actually thought the VA for Pocahontas had changed since she sounds younger here, but it’s the same one. Mel Gibson decided not to return to this movie. Maybe he was too busy being a crazy anti-semite. But they did hire his brother, Donal, to do the voice work instead. To his credit, he does sound very similar to Mel, but not quite similar enough to go unnoticed.

Ratcliffe appears in front of the king and basically tells a bunch of lies about what happened in the original movie. He says John Smith was a traitor plotting with the Powhatan tribe to start a war and save his own skin. In order to prevent an attack from the tribe, King James sends out John Rolfe to speak with the chief and bring him back for negotiations.

We then cut to Jamestown where it’s winter, which means the animators really didn’t want to even try to match the landscapes and great art of the original movie. They just splashed white all over everything, put a few bare trees around and boom, Carnation instant landscape. Now with 95% less creativity.

We discover that it has been “several” years since the events of the last movie and at least a few years since John Smith’s “death.” In the meantime, many new colonists have settled in.

Pocahontas’ best friend whose name escapes me as she was only in two minutes of this movie and had about as many lines as Meeko tells her that she needs to move on. And, after a song break, she does. Yay! She buries his compass in the snow (because snow never melts, right?) and moves on.

I must say that, while the songs aren’t that good, they’re at least several degrees better than the drek I’ve been listening to with Cinderella 2 and Hunchback 2. ‘Where do I go from Here?’ Is actually pretty good and memorable as well.

A new ship has arrived at the dock and Pocahontas goes to investigate. She has a run-in with a racist merchant which prompts an attack by the warriors of her tribe and a retaliation from the guards on the boat. However, she steps in before anyone starts attacking.

John Rolfe then steps in and says basically the same thing that Pocahontas says, which causes them to stand down. While John Rolfe is pleased with himself for stopping the attack, Pocahontas is enraged that John Rolfe butted in. DAMN YOU PALE SKINS AND YOUR NEED TO INTERRUPT PEACEMAKING WITH MORE PEACEMAKING!

He overhears some women talking about Pocahontas preventing war, and he believes Pocahontas is the name of the tribe leader. When he meets the tribe leader and offers a horse as a gift for him, the chief reveals that Pocahontas is the name of his daughter, and Rolfe is shocked to see that it’s the same girl from before. He begrudgingly gives the horse to Pocahontas and starts speaking with the chief.

He asks the chief to go back to England with him to negotiate with the king, but the chief refuses to go with him due to distrust of his people. Pocahontas decides to go in his place. Though John Rolfe doesn’t like the idea, he decides that it’s the only way to prevent war and that it is a viable option since she is royalty.

They embark on their journey with her bodyguard Uttamatomakkin, also known as Uti, who is arguably the funniest new character. His stone face and deadpan responses are just great. Uti is voiced by Brad Garret of Everybody Loves Raymond, which is odd because Uti barely says one line in this movie. Must’ve been the easiest paycheck he ever got. Also, what is up with Brad Garret and Disquels? He was in Tarzan 2 as well.

He is based on a real person of the same name who was also Pocahontas’ actual bodyguard. In real life, he was told by the chief to put a notch in a stick for every pale face that he saw in England to understand their numbers and strength, but eventually he gave up since there were simply too many people. He does the same exact thing in the movie, throwing away a tiny toothpick sized stick in the middle of a song about London as he was making notches during the entire song.

Flit, Meeko and Ratcliffe’s dog, Percy, who stayed behind with Pocahontas in the last movie, stowaway on the ship.

Percy actually gets drunk from drinking rum on the ship, which shocked the living crap out of me. They even put RUM in giant words on the barrels.

Well, now we know why the rum’s always gone.

They arrive in London, and aforementioned London song happens since Pocahontas is so fascinated by how different London is to her home. I’m surprised she isn’t flabbergasted at the complete lack of any nature there.

They arrive at John Rolfe’s home where we’re introduced to another funny character, Mrs. Jenkins. She is very nice, nearly to a fault, and is blind as a bat without her glasses. She also constantly makes tea. Despite her lame blindness gags, she’s a very likable grandmother-like character. She’s voiced by Jean Stapleton, whom you may remember as Edith from All in the Family.

John Rolfe goes off to meet with the king, and King James tells him that, unless he’s impressed by Pocahontas as a civilized princess, he will let the armada sail and war will erupt. Ratcliffe suggests that he invite her to an upcoming ball to get a good understanding of her. The king agrees and sends Rolfe off.

Rolfe is stressed out because of this sudden turn of events. Acting accordingly at a ball and not crossing any of the numerous boundaries that are set in royal surroundings is incredibly difficult even for people who live there, let alone a person who doesn’t even know the slightest about their culture. However, Pocahontas agrees to try her best to be presentable and proper during the ball for the sake of her tribe.

We get a scene of Pocahontas in her underwear entering Rolfe’s room. Get your mind out of the gutter. The only reason I’m even bringing this up is because Rolfe gets very embarrassed at her clothes and I found this very odd.

I get that it’s “underwear”, but it’s oldtimey underwear. Ya know, that stuff that’s like a damn jumpsuit? I know, being a gentleman and given the time period, it’s still not out of the question that he’d be embarrassed, but it just seems so weird because it’s actually covering way more than her original clothes were.

Pictured Left: A streaker – Pictured Right: Modesty in the 17th century

We get a musical montage which I guess is supposed to be a mix between a love song and a makeover song. Oh well, it’s much less painful than the one in Cinderella 2.

She comes out looking great, even has white powder on her face. I know that massive amounts of makeup were quite common in 17^th century England, but is this kinda….white face? Is that a thing? Are they trying to make her look more white so she’ll be more easily accepted. If so, yikes….

She and Rolfe have a slight ‘moment’ when he gives her a necklace to wear, and she removes the one that her mother gave her.

They go to the ball, and, despite some initial awkwardness, the king seems to like her just fine, and the more likable queen also enjoys her presence.

During this ball we see a drunk man. Well, I just don’t know. Is Disney trying to throw off their new rep or something and get back to their old one?

We get to dinner and a show where Ratcliffe squeezes in what I guess is his villain song, but is basically “Pocahontas can’t be trusted, but I’m not gonna outright say that” Then we get to a bear-baiting scene, which is where a couple of guys poke at a trapped bear with spears and that’s supposed to be hilarious.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Pocahontas is obviously appalled by this and stops the show to protect the bear. As the king shrugs off the bear as a mere animal and nothing more, Pocahontas calls them the real savages. As a result, the king has her and Uti imprisoned. Would it be redundant to say that this movie makes English people look really bad? It does. Later Ratcliffe even slashes up the flag of England with his sword.

John Rolfe paces in his courtyard trying to decide what to do when a cloaked man approaches him. Gee I wonder who that could be. John Smith’s totes dead, so I guess it’s a mystery.

John Rolfe and mystery man enter the tower with the mystery man acting as Rolfe’s prisoner. The mystery man distracts the guards by running away while Rolfe rescues Pocahontas and Uti.

They share a hug when the mystery man reappears and shows himself to be JOHN SMITH!?

They escape the tower and we head back to Rolfe’s place because….they’d never look there? Pocahontas and John Smith have a less-than-touching reunion. They hug and say that they missed each other. John Smith explains that Ratcliffe lied about his death, but he used that to his advantage. Pocahontas asked why he never wrote to her, and he basically says “I started a bunch of letters, but I never sent any because…well, no reason really. Just felt like being a prick.”

Pocahontas decides that she must go off to save her people from the impending attack. John Smith wants her to go into hiding and let the war happen while John Rolfe wants her to stand up for herself and her people by going.

Boy, Smith turned into a bit of a jerk since he left didn’t he? Yeah, let all of your people die and protect yourself. After all, I maybe still care about you a bit. This is probably to simplify the love triangle….angle as much as humanly possible. Wouldn’t want any question as to who she’s going to end up with. Then she runs off into the forest.

Pocahontas reprises her ‘Where Do I Go from Here?’ song, wipes the white powder from her face and returns to the boys after Smith and Rolfe determine that Rolfe’s in love with her.

Rolfe, Smith and Pocahontas have a weird dynamic. Rolfe and Smith play off of each other well, acting like only slight romantic rivals and more like buddies. John Smith’s acting like a bit of a jerk in this movie, so I can’t much root for Pocahontas and him here, though I guess that’s the point.

I will admit that Pocahontas and Rolfe have an interesting relationship just in terms of how it came to be. Initially they hated each other, albeit for a dumb reason, but they did. This is very uncommon in Disney movies in general. Most Disney romances involve love at first or second sight. This one actually took a bit of time.

This romance is also weird because I believe it’s Disney’s first ever rebound romance. I can’t think of any other instance in a Disney movie where the main character had a love triangle or even another romantic interest….Maybe Pirates of the Caribbean, but you always knew she’d go with Will.

However, there’s not much romance involved here. They only sing a duet at the end of the movie as a credits song, and it’s more of an “our romance will unite our worlds” song instead of an outright love song. They never really share a big romantic moment. I guess I should say they have a very subtle love, but maybe it’s too subtle?

Pocahontas announces that she’s going to stop the armada, and the boys follow her. As the king is having a meeting, Pocahontas intrudes and tells him that everything Ratcliffe told him was a lie. This is proven when John Smith reveals himself to the king and claims that Ratcliffe lied about his death along with everything else.

As a big stir starts in the crowd, Pocahontas tells the king to listen to his heart, and his wife gives him a smile and a nod before he gives in. However, he states that Ratcliffe has already left with the armada, so Pocahontas, Smith and Rolfe go off to stop him.

They manage to catch them just as they’re about to leave. They have a pretty nicely animated battle that leads to a sword battle between Ratcliffe and Smith. Smith wins out and stupidly gives Ratcliffe his sword back telling him to sheathe it. Boy, I hope that doesn’t bite him in the ass.

So it bites him in the ass as Ratcliffe uses the motion of him sheathing his sword to cover up his grabbing his gun. But Rolfe saves the day by knocking Ratcliffe overboard with the sail. He’s arrested and we cut to later on.

Pocahontas and Rolfe have a moment. Rolfe has been assigned to the king’s royal court or something, and they skirt around what they want to say. They’re about to say it when Smith comes back and picks up Pocahontas saying that he’s been given a boat.

Then he tells Pocahontas that they can sail the world and whatnot, but Pocahontas explains that she doesn’t want that. She tells him that they used to walk the same path, but now she’s found a different one. He quickly understands and they part ways. Pocahontas turns around and notices that Rolfe left as well.

Cut to her departure back home and she notices Rolfe is still gone, but says goodbye to Mrs. Jenkins. Uti also stays behind in London with Mrs. Jenkins and the bear from the show….Why? I don’t know. Maybe he liked her sandwiches so much he decided to stay.

The boat departs, and she sees Rolfe on the ship. He’s decided to give up the cushy job and head to her homeland where he’ll be shunned by the tribe and everyone will wonder what the hell is up with Pocahontas and white people.

They kiss and sail off into the sunset. This also didn’t happen. She stayed in England until she died, which was only about a year after she arrived. Also the stuff about changing her name to Rebecca. But I guess Disney wanted a happier ending.

The art and animation are surprisingly pretty good for a Disney sequel, but there are some things that bug me.

First, even though everyone is kinda off-model from the original movie, John Smith looks terribly off for some reason. Something about him is very wrong. Like his head is too thin or he’s malnourished or something.

Second, all of the shots with the boats are CGI, which don’t look too bad, but it’s distracting a lot of the time.

Finally, the background art is not nearly as vast and epic as the original movie. The king’s meeting room or whatever that was was beautiful, but not much else.

The movie is actually fairly funny as well. Uti and Mrs. Jenkins made me chuckle several times.

Bottom Line: All in all, this is actually one of the better Disney sequels, and I applaud Disney for trying to be more historically accurate, to a degree anyway. I noticed that this movie does tend to get quite a bit of flak, even for a Disquel, and, not surprisingly, most of the complaints are about the fact that Pocahontas ended up with John Rolfe instead of John Smith, even though, like I said, that is what happened in real life.

Some people were even calling her a slut in reviews and comments because she decided to go with him over Smith. Because, ya know, if you don’t end up with your first love, you’re a big ol’ whore. And ya know what, even if the real story did have her ending up with Smith, once she reached an appropriate age anyway, this story would still be just fine.

If you look at the ending of Pocahontas in a different light, you can actually take it as Pocahontas and Smith basically cutting off their romance since they know they’ll be apart for at least several months or even years. I guess a lot of people take the last shot of the movie as a kind of promise to wait for Smith to return to her, but you could interpret it as her saying goodbye to him too.

Hell, for all we knew, Smith was never coming back. He never said such a thing. The chief just said he was always welcome in their tribe, and Pocahontas said she’d always be with him (in his heart/spirit).

They agreed to part ways. She didn’t want to leave her tribe to be with him (even though, that’s actually kinda cold considering he’s seriously wounded as he leaves. A festering gunshot wound and a several month boat trip; it’s a miracle he lived) and he couldn’t stay because they didn’t have the resources to treat Smith’s gunshot wound.

The fact that Smith didn’t write her or visit her after he got better is actually somewhat understandable. When you have a fleeting romance with someone and it ends up with you basically having to part ways, it can be really difficult to be the one who feels compelled to start the first lines of communication after that, especially if the ending truly was a goodbye. Pocahontas moving on to someone else that she’s grown to care for is healthy and completely understandable as well, especially considering how much time has supposedly gone by since Smith’s departure.

Even seeing him alive and well and finally reuniting after all that time, it makes perfect sense that their feelings changed. And let me remind everyone who thought or wrote ‘slut’ or the like in response to this; Pocahontas only ever pursued Rolfe romantically after properly breaking it off with Smith after finding out he was alive.

I actually felt kinda awkward when Smith basically expected Pocahontas to drop everything and sail around with him. Their romance didn’t blossom again after they reunited, outside of being happy to see him and knowing he’s alive; another thing that makes sense considering how long it’s been since they have spoken or were romantically involved. Kinda felt like he either had delusions of picking up where he left off with her after years of never saying a word to her or he felt entitled to their relationship or something.

The choice to have her go with Rolfe back to her tribe and live happily ever after was also a good one. Despite being nothing like the actual ending outside of her ending up with Rolfe, from a storytelling perspective, and knowing this Pocahontas like we know her, it wouldn’t be a good choice to have her stay in London with Rolfe or sailing around for who knows how long with Smith. This Pocahontas belongs back with her tribe enjoying the colors of the wind.

The other thing was that people actually seemed to seriously DISlike that Disney wanted to go down a more historically accurate route. Go to IMDB’s review page on this movie. You’ll see a bunch of comments like these:

“Yes, in reality she ended up with John Rolfe, but -bleep- reality. I don’t want reality. When I sit down to watch a Disney movie I want to get lost in a world where every princess gets her (ORIGINAL) Disney hero. I REALLY don’t like new dudes with ZERO personality coming in and nabbing the princess just because “that’s how it REALLY happened”.”

“So here is what I can tell you Disney: I do not CARE how it was in reality. I wanted to see how John Smith and Pocahontas get together again.”

“I understand that Disney felt it had to keep the story as historically correct as possible but Disney films are aimed at children and as a child i couldn’t care less about historical accuracy, i just wanted the love and magic between Pocahontas and Smith to finally be restored. If Disney are so worried about historical accuracy than why didn’t they end the Little Mermaid in Ariels suicide because thats more accurate to the original story isn’t it?”

In response to that last part, you’re confusing historical accuracy (something that actually happened) with fictional accuracy (the events of The Little Mermaid never happened). People get more pissed off when historical events are changed in movies and other media because it seems like you’re disrespecting real people and real events.

People get pissed off when fictional accuracy is being played with since people have a great attachment and respect for artistic works, but considering it’s merely fictional it’s hard to feel as offended when Hollywood screws up these works as opposed to real stories of real people.

Is it a fantastic sequel? No. But I do believe it’s one of the stronger entries in the Disquel universe. If this movie really is just getting so much severe backlash for Pocahontas’ love life and for the fact that it was trying to be more historically accurate after being so ‘magic leaves’ in the first movie…..My God, people, get the hell over it.

Disney movies, especially ones with Disney princesses, get so much crap for the typical ‘Disney romances’ that are always unrealistic and happily ever after. Yet no one’s happy when a more realistic ending is presented to them.

I’m not denying that there is a lot of legitimate criticism for this movie, but the romance stuff is the main focus of a lot of reviewers and commenters.

If I can compare this to another Disney classic and Disquel for a second, let’s take The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In that movie, Quasimodo doesn’t get the girl no matter how much a majority of the audience wanted it to happen, and instead Esmeralda marries Phoebos. They also didn’t end up together in the original novel, but at least the movie was kind enough to not have Esmeralda hanged and Quasimodo die in a tomb of starvation as he wept near her body.

In the Disquel we all wish never happened, they don’t try to shove the two together through Disney magic because everyone wanted it; they make him best friends with her and Phoebos’ son, Zephyr, and give him a bland-as-stale-unsalted-crackers love interest.

Not to say HND2 is any decent at all. In fact this comparison was really only brought up because Pocahontas 2 and Hunchback 2 are seriously just 1% away from each other in their Rotten Tomatoes ratings and .1 away in their IMDB ratings.

Are you people serious? Pocahontas 2 is far from a great movie, but to put it on the exact same shelf made of crap that Hunchback 2 is? Are you nuts? There’s much more to legitimately like about this movie than in Hunchback 2. Everyone’s entitled to their opinions, but in as much of an objective light as I can muster, the differences in quality in practically every regard are blindingly apparent. I’m really surprised at how much just fan response is making me defend this movie.

Let’s wrap it up, though. Unless you’re a hardcore Smith purist and/or don’t want any real world accuracy damaging your views on a movie in which a real life 27-year-old man and a real life 11-year-old girl are rewritten to be of-age lovers, I see no harm in giving this a watch.

There are several funny moments, the story’s decent enough, and it has a continuation with an actual story instead of just Adventures of Random Things that Happened After (movie).

I will agree with some reviewers and say that the romance is quite shaky. They don’t build it up enough before they decide to send Rolfe and Pocahontas off to live together in her tribe, and they, admittedly, do make Smith out to be a bit of an asshole in order to nudge the love triangle away. While I definitely sympathize with the feeling of a beloved classic being ruined by a Disquel, this one, in my opinion, doesn’t do nearly as much damage as a lot of other Disquels.

Recommended Audience: You see a dog and a person get drunk and Pocahontas in underwear that covers more than her actual clothes do. Also a bear gets tortured, but you don’t really see anything happen to him. They rear up and then the bear reacts. 7+

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Dissecting the Disquels: Bambi 2

Plot: What exactly happened in the time after Bambi’s mother’s death yet before he became a buck? Bambi’s father, The Great Prince of the Forest, has difficulties in raising a child on his own and searches for a doe to take over parenting him. However, while bonding with his son, he struggles with the concept of giving him up.

Breakdown: I know this is going to be a surprise….but I really like this movie. I mean, it’s no masterpiece, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable movie to me. This movie is a midquel set after Bambi’s mom dies but before he grows up any. It chronicles the time Bambi spent with his father. Now, see, this is actually something that the original movie never delved much into and is a pretty interesting concept.

Sadly, not much happens in the movie. I actually started making a scene by scene review of this movie like I have for practically every other Disney sequel, but I saw little point because I didn’t really have much to say about the scenes at hand. It’s a pretty tame flick, though I have to say that it’s one of the few Disney sequels that actually delves into death both with Bambi’s mom and a couple of the dogs that chase Bambi at the end of the movie. I mean, they don’t outright say that they’re dead, but they fall off of a cliffside and are no longer a threat so yeah.

It actually does have pretty good emotional impact too. Though Bambi gets over his mom’s death fairly quickly, you can definitely feel grief in him and his father, and you can feel the emotional attachment between The Great Prince and Bambi. They really seem like a believable father and son.

The story has good pacing, great atmosphere and nice dialogue.

However, it’s not without some flaws.

The story, while good, is predictable no matter if it’s a midquel or not. We all know he’s going to change his mind about giving Bambi away to a new doe, we all know he’s going to grow attached to him, and we know Bambi will learn and grow from his father.

If you’re going to do a death fake out, like every emotional family film, do it when the dogs are actually attacking him, not when he’s just standing on the cliff after he’s already defeated them. That’d be so lame if he died from that. “Oh hey, my small fawn of a son just defeated several dogs that were chasing h—and he died from standing on an unstable rock. Lovely.”

Ronno, the mean deer from the first movie, also makes an appearance here. If it wasn’t glaringly obvious by seeing him for two seconds on screen, he’s our movie’s antagonist. And holy freakin’ crap they overdid the hell out of his personality.

There are no likable factors about him, but he’s also a cliché bully. He’s mean, violent, rude even to his mom, mocking about matters of death and child abandonment, a liar and a complete coward. Yeah, he’s the typical bully that talks big game and likes to fight, but when he actually gets hurt or senses danger he runs to his mother like a baby. That is practically every scene he’s in. Acts like a big shot, insults or mocks Bambi, something comedic happens to him like he gets hit by a branch or slips and falls, the end. I mean, I know he’s a big asshole in the first movie too, but wow.

He’s mostly meant to serve as a measuring stick to show Bambi’s progress in growing up. At the beginning of the film, he has little confidence and not much skill as a deer, meaning Ronno can easily best him in nearly every area. Near the end, he matches and beats Ronno in several areas. However, Ronno doesn’t get any real comeuppance in this movie. He doesn’t get beaten by Bambi in a fight, and his final scene is of him slipping on a rock and falling into the stream. Then again, I guess considering that he beats him in the sequel, we don’t really need to see that.

Faline, the doe who eventually becomes Bambi’s mate, also makes an appearance here, and she’s incredibly likable. Her relationship with Bambi is very cute and she’s a very nice young doe.

Thumper and Flower are as cute and funny as ever as well.

If there’s one character I feel bad for, though, it’s Mina. She was supposedly Bambi’s mother’s close friend and she was the doe chosen to be Bambi’s new mother, but after The Great Prince decides to take care of Bambi himself, she just smiles and walks away. Poor Mina….Also, she wasn’t very fleshed out as a character. Maybe that’s a good thing though to avoid getting too attached to a small part character.

The art and animation are actually very well done. Hell, this movie could’ve been released in theaters instead of straight to DVD. It’s so different considering the average quality of most Disney sequels.

The music is…..good-ish. It’s not winning any awards with me, but there are some memorable songs that are pretty good – better than some of the other songs in Disney Sequels.

The acting and the voices were both very well done. Everyone seemed very fitting in their roles, and they all did a great job. Patrick Stewart voices The Great Prince, and he’s awesome at it, so you can wet your pants now. Also, according to the Wiki, he’s apparently been asked to do several Disney roles before deciding on the Great Prince such as Jafar, King Triton, Zazu, of all things, and Zeus. Though the Great Prince does fit him best out of all of these, it is weird that when he finally decided on a role for his awesome voice to grace and it’s in a direct-to-DVD Disney sequel.

Bottom Line: I’d rank this number two behind TLK 2 as my favorite Disney sequels….though that might not be saying much considering the competition. It’s not a must see, but it’s still an enjoyable feel-good movie for Disney fans.

Recommended Audience: Only things that might be questionable are slight mentions of death, ‘scary themes’ with the hunting dogs, two of them might’ve actually died, fake-out death of the main character that is a huge fake-out seeing as how we know he lives to be an adult. 5+

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Dissecting the Disquels: Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas

Plot: Taking place somewhere after the wolf attack, it’s Christmastime, and Belle and the others want to celebrate. However, Beast hates Christmas since that was the day he was turned into the beast. Belle and the others are determined to make Christmas anyway to try to make him happier, but the court composer turned pipe organ, Forte, doesn’t want the Beast to become happy as that means his somber emo music will have no place in the castle.

Breakdown: I really liked the first Beauty and the Beast. I was never a huge fan of it and it’s been ages since I’ve sat down and watched it all the way through, but I liked it. Christmas in July is going down and whatnot, so why not give this a nice review? Is this a nice late Christmas surprise or a big glass of eggnog that’s been sitting in the open since Christmas of 1997?

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Our movie starts out on Christmas Eve set after the events of BatB, so everyone’s back to their human forms that no one wants to see them in. As Chip opens a present early, Cogsworth and Lumiere argue over who saved Christmas last year. In order the settle the dispute, Mrs. Potts says she has to tell the story all over again, and Chip acts like he’s never heard it before even though it sounds like she’s told this story several times and he was, ya know, there at the time. Exactly the same problem as Cinderella 2, that’s a great start.

Before I get down to the nitty gritty, I don’t remember enough about the first movie to point out every inconsistency between what I’m about to watch and what actually occurred.

I will, however, point out the glaringly obvious. No matter what happens in this story, it’s pointless. This story happens after Belle gets attacked by wolves in the forest but before any scene that follows that. I guess it’s during that montage where they’re getting along. The events of this story obviously had no impact on anything or else they would’ve showed them in the original movie. Gee, will Belle break the spell? Will they defeat the villain? Obviously they do or else the second half of the original movie would be drastically different.

Midquels can work even with this problem, like Bambi 2, but at least that movie had something interesting we wanted to see. This is just one more thing they did during the montage that made them closer.

The story starts out with really sloppy animation as Mrs. Potts’ words clearly don’t match her lips in the first scene. The group is still hell-bent on getting Belle and the Beast together so they try to get them to go on a walk.

We get some painful slapstick and some awkwardness as Beast meets Belle on the ice out front. Belle then tries to ice skate with Beast….despite the fact that he has no ice skates. Take it from my dog, paws are not ice skate material. They’re slip and fall on your ass material.

We zoom out from the ice skating scene to see our main villain of the movie, Forte, voiced by Tim Curry because he never plays anything but villains….and Nigel Thornberry. Forte is a giant pipe organ. He’s also entirely CGI which contrasts greatly with everything else being traditionally drawn and cel shaded. He’s playing a song for his ‘friend’ or lacky, a piccolo named Fife played by Paul Reubens.

Fife says he sees Beast outside skating with Belle and gets excited because he believes he may fall in love with Belle and break the spell. This sends Forte into a hissy fit, though, as he actually wants to stay as a pipe organ despite the fact that not but 30 seconds ago he raged at being chained to the wall and being unable to move.

He wants to stay in that state because he has a crush on the Beast……..Okay, not really but he might as well. He thought his position was pointless and unappreciated when he was human but now that he IS the pipe organ, the beast is apparently always going to him to listen to sad music when he’s emo because My Chemical Romance hadn’t gotten together at that point yet.

He feels he’s Beast’s best friend and confidant despite the fact that he’s never mentioned before or after this in the original movie, nor is Fife, and he’s jealous of Belle spending time with him. Thus he sends Fife to split them up before Beast falls in love.

Belle and Beast are hitting it off and Beast is even inexplicably getting better at ice skating. Fife tries to stop their romantic shenanigans, but just makes them crash into a snowbanking which doesn’t really bother them.

Belle: “Look, a Christmas angel!” No, that’s a snow angel. Just because you make a snow angel on Christmas doesn’t make it a Christmas angel. It’s not even Christmas, it’s Christmas Eve.

Beast shows his imprint in the snow, which is just a snowy mess and it causes him to have a hissy fit.

Beast: (in front of the rose) “I hate Christmas…” You’re a mean one, nanana, Mr. Grinch.

I really shouldn’t mix those two movies together or else I might cause a tear in the delicate balance of the universe.

So obviously Beast mopes by the fire while Forte serenades his emoness.

Cut to Belle talking with Chip about what a crankypants Beast is and then talks about Christmas. However, Chip doesn’t know what Christmas is, which blows my mind. Mrs. Potts never tried to make Christmas for him? I can’t imagine that’s true.

Chip asks Belle what she’d get Beast for Christmas, and Chip suggests she should make Beast a story.

She thinks that’s a great idea and starts making him one during our first song of the movie. Now I distinctly remember Nchick talking about this song with annoyance in her review because she felt like the movie shifted gears between the Beast needing to learn to be a better person in order to be with Belle properly to Belle thinking Beast just needed to cheered up or ‘fixed’ and he was becoming her little project. And I do have to say, I think she has a point.

I remember a lot of Belle arguing with and yelling at Beast in the original movie, and he was the one who had to work through his own crap to earn Belle’s affection. It wasn’t a matter of cheering him up or making him get over being a beast. He was a jackass before he became the Beast and he had to change on his own….that’s kinda…the plot of the original movie.

However, I don’t really know why she was singling out this song in particular. I guess for the opening few lines where she talks about the Beast needing someone and blah blah. Yeah, that’s there, but the rest of the song is really about how great books are and how getting lost in a book world could make Beast happier. The song’s fairly good, and the background animation is really interesting and creative too. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s fine.

Cogsworth says they can’t have Christmas because the Beast hates Christmas. It reminds him of his past and makes him even more of a bummer than usual.

I love when they’re talking about preparing a big Christmas feast. They can’t eat any of the things they’re listing, and all of that stuff would be served on their faces.

Is every single item in the Beast’s castle a person? Serious question. Because I almost feel like he’d have nothing in his castle but people if the spell were ever reversed.

Belle and Lumiere go see Angelique who was the castle decorator. She’s apparently an angel tree topper, which explains why she’s rotting away in the attic with her ornament friends. They want her to help them make Christmas, but she refuses because she doesn’t have time, so they decorate without her. Glad that character was so necessary.

It’s here where we get our second song about how awesome Christmas is. It’s also a fairly good song that I have nothing really to note about.

Forte tells Beast that Belle’s planning Christmas, so of course he flips out. Then we get a flashback to an animated version of the story of the prince becoming the beast. In the original movie, we’re not given any indication that this occurred on Christmas. It does occur in winter, but that’s all we’re told. Also, from what the stained glass in the original shows, it was a thunderstorm outside not a blizzard….So I decided to look back and nitpick a bit. So what?

Also, uh, Chip had to have been there on Christmas seeing as how that’s when he turned into a cup so how does he not know what Christmas is?

It still bugs me to this day that the witch decided to curse everyone in his castle too. What the hell did they ever do to her?

And if we’re going to be flashbacking here, where are Beast’s parents?

I would say that the prince pre-beast was way over-doing it on the whole spoiled jackass prince thing, but considering the way Beast acts on a regular basis, it’s probably fairly accurate.

Beast then decides to confront Belle who is in the boiler room trying to find a yule log. I always wondered what a yule log was for and now that I know….I find it pretty stupid. You find a log, everyone touches it makes a wish? Oh well, I guess it’s not any stupider than the thing with the wishbone.

Beast flips out at her in emo mode some more and says no Christmas, but she says she won’t stop trying.

Why exactly is Beast given a free pass to be a jerk on Christmas? I mean, yeah, boo hoo that’s when he turned into a beast, but that’s also when everyone else in the castle was turned into FURNITURE. And I have to say, if I had the choice to either be some weird werewolf chimera thing or a candlestick, I’d choose the damn werewolf chimera thing.

Belle and Chip go off into the woods to cut down a Christmas tree while Beast finds the present Belle made for him and says he’ll get her something too.

Beast asks Forte to compose happy music for Belle as her Christmas gift, which makes Forte ornery, so he decides to get rid of Belle so Beast will go back to his mopey self and he’ll hear no more of that ‘love’ garbage.

You know, this villain’s pretty damn lame. Tim Curry’s trying his best, but Forte is just a Sailor Moon villain plain and simple. He hates love and happiness and practically feeds off of negativity. In addition to that, what kind of threat can he really pose when he’s a pipe organ chained to the wall? All he can move is his face.

Forte lures Belle into his chambers by using Fife to call the little dog ottoman thing. He plays nice and says he’s all for Christmas to cheer up Beast. However, Belle and Chip failed to find a tree, so Forte suggests that she go into the Black Forest to find one. Belle promised Beast she wouldn’t leave, but Forte convinces her that that the tree is so integral that she has no choice but to go get one there. She says it looks dangerous and, like, no freakin’ shit. She got attacked by wolves in there not but a couple of days ago. Once she leaves, he tells Fife to follow them and ensure they never come back.

Beast wants to meet with Belle to let her listen to the song he had Forte make for her, but she’s off to the Black Forest, so Lumiere and Cogsworth go off to find her.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Potts is trying to distract Beast from realizing that Belle’s gone, and we hear the song Forte made for Belle. It’s just ‘Deck the Halls’…Played awfully since Forte’s a pipe organ and he’s not putting any effort into singing because he hates happy songs.

Beast finds out that Belle is gone and wants to bring her back, but Forte tries to stop him with our third song which I don’t care much for, but it’s alright. I will however note one line in which Forte yells out the word ‘hell’. I did not see that coming. I was blindsided. ‘Hell”s not the grandpappy of all swears or anything, but it’s still a word that typically doesn’t get heard in children’s movies, especially not Christmas specials. It’s just used to emphasize how awful it is to be in love. And yes, that’s what the entire song is about – how awful it is to be in love. The visuals are pretty damn nice, but the song is just meh.

Forte also says “If you’re turned on, just turn off!” during the song. Wow, Disney was really feeling naughty that day, eh?

The song works, and Beast tears up all of the Christmas decorations that everyone put up. Angelique is still there by the way. Her part is basically to stand there and be a bitch.

Belle and Chip are going way too friggin’ far into the forest to find….a TREE. For the love of God, you can see all sorts of pine trees from the damn window of the castle right there on the treeline.

And they’re using an axe whose shtick is to be a stereotypical Jewish person. I don’t know how to respond to that, really.

They get the tree down, and Fife tries to sabotage them, but they discover him as he tries to catch up to the sleigh. I guess he starts having involuntary spasms where he whistles, and this scares the horse, breaking the ice over the lake. Chip falls into the water and Belle saves him, but she’s dragged underwater by the tree. The Beast still goes after her for some reason and saves her life complete with slow-mo immersion from the ice.

Beast locks her away in the dungeon for going back on her word to never leave, and Belle’s handling hypothermia in that cold dungeon very well.

Everyone’s sad for one reason or another besides Forte who’s all happy because Beast is mopey and has given up on Belle. The group decides to visit Belle by entering the dungeon through a doggy door that was installed in the dungeon door for some reason. Angelique, that character who has barely had a part and has been nothing but a whiny Negative Nancy says she’s changed her mind about Christmas since the nice decorations were ruined by the Beast. Then she reprises the song about Christmas from earlier with Belle, and it’s actually pretty nice.

Beast broods some more, and Forte tries to tempt Beast into smashing the rose to end his naïve notions of ever falling in love and breaking the curse once and for all. This scene is meant to have tension, but there is none seeing as how there’s no way he’d ever do it. If he did, the first movie would’ve ended in the middle.

As he’s about to smash it, a single rose petal falls on Belle’s gift to Beast. Forte tries to make fun of it, but Beast chooses to read it…..I’m just now realizing that Belle wrote a fairly long book in the time frame of a few hours. I knew she could read like crazy, but that’s insane.

The visuals while reading the book are also fairly nice, and I commend Disney for remembering to put the text in French.

We interrupt this movie for a pointless song sequence by Lumiere and Cogsworth.

God, it’s like the movie suddenly remembered an hour in that this movie was supposed to be a dick measuring contest between Cogsworth and Lumiere and decided to just up and throw in a random song immediately after Beast’s revelation scene to have Cogsworth and Lumiere basically go back and forth saying “I’m better than you.” It is one of the most jarring transitions I’ve ever seen. The song is probably the lowest of the bunch with several lame lyrics and, again, it has no point. It’s also very short.

Beast and Belle make up, and Beast wants to make the best Christmas ever for Belle. Obviously, Forte will have none of that, but what’s he going to do? He’s a pipe organ chained to the wall…..

Oh yeah, he has magic music powers for no reason whatsoever and we’re never told how he got them. Yeah, apparently Forte can make music so loud that it not only causes the castle to start BREAKING APART and CRUMBLING BENEATH THEIR FEET, but he also controls weird green music notes that attack anyone near him….Those things also appeared in Forte’s song but I just thought they were for the musical section. The visuals in musical sections never make sense logically, especially in Disney movies, but whatever.

Beast defeats him by ripping out his keyboard and throwing it into the pipes, which, considering he’s just a transformed person, is basically the equivalent to someone tearing off your arms and impaling you in the gut with them, causing him to break free from the wall and fall over dead.

You just witnessed a gruesome murder. Merry Christmas! 😀

Oh and yeah, the reason both Cogsworth and Lumiere thought they each saved Christmas was because they saved the rose from falling on the ground. That was also a complete after-thought scene I think.

We see Belle and the Beast enter the room to celebrate Christmas while the audience wonders how the hell the castle got fixed and decorated in only a few hours.

Cut back to present day, Mrs. Potts says, if anyone saved Christmas, it’s Belle. And speak of the devil, here comes Belle and the be—Guy with no name now….This is bugging me. I really need to look this up….Hm, his real name is Adam apparently. Okie dokie.

They give Chip a storybook as a present and ask Fife, now the new court composer, to start playing music.

Belle and…Adam, I feel awkward saying that, walk off onto the balcony where he gives her a rose as his gift. I’d say he’s being cheap for a super-rich prince, but it’s symbolic and romantic and whatnot.

And that’s the end.

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My opinion? It’s a perfectly fine movie, and it’s also a perfectly enjoyable Christmas movie. Is it perfect? Hell no. Are there numerous continuity errors/plot holes? Yes. Are there cheesy/lame parts? Yes. But it’s not as bad as I was fearing, in fact I’d rank it rather high on the list of Disney sequels. Many of the visuals are wonderful, and it was well-directed. It’s not as nice to look at as the first movie, especially with CGI Forte being a sore thumb, but it’s not TV series quality and it’s pretty nice to look at.

The music is also really good for a Disney sequel, and I commend them for coming up with a new Christmas song that wasn’t cheesy as hell. There’s actually three versions of the song in this movie. The first, the reprise and the credits version. I find the credits version the best.

The other songs are also fairly good. The only one I want to complain about is the ‘I’m better than you’ song, and even that wasn’t that awful. Just jarringly placed, out of tone of the rest of the surrounding scenes and lame lyrically.

The story has its problems, I won’t deny, and there are plenty of little details that nitpickers like me will want to gnaw at, but it’s nothing major.

I also found that most of the reviews on IMDB for this movie were fairly positive, and most of the complaints about the movie were just comparing it to the original. I can understand how certain aspects like Belle seeming too chipper or hanging around too much with Chip or making Beast seem too broody would get on a fan’s nerves, but it’s not that bad.

Forte as a villain, despite Tim Curry’s best efforts, and I give him credit for that, is just….lame. While you can tell that he’s partially motivated by not wanting to feel useless or abandoned, he’s mostly just hating on love and happiness for a good bulk of the movie and wants nothing more than for Beast to perpetually be a little emo git so he can serenade him all day. He does have energy and character, however, but that’s really just contributed to Mr. Curry’s performance.

Fife is your typically timid lackey who was obviously going to turn on Forte in the end. He wasn’t too annoying though.

Angelique was just kinda there, but her reprise of the Christmas song made up for a good chunk of that.

Bottom Line: All in all, I’d say I recommend this movie. Like I said, it’s not perfect, but it’s far from being one of the rotten apples on the Disney Sequel tree……..However……there is another sequel….Belle’s Magical World…..I don’t even know what that movie’s about, but I’ll give it some hope considering this movie’s quality.

Recommended Audience: Despite the ‘hell’ thing and the incredibly minor sexual overtone-ish line, there’s nothing really offensive in this movie. 5+

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Dissecting the Disquels: Tarzan and Jane

Plot: Jane tries to plan something for her and Tarzan’s first wedding anniversary. A full-episode clip show ensues.

Breakdown: I mentioned in my Tarzan 2 review that Tarzan actually did get its own series; The Legend of Tarzan. It’s a series I didn’t remember at all, in the slightest, even through promos, and I kinda understand why. It only had 39 episodes and two technical seasons. Though, I don’t quite get why it was canceled. According to the Wiki page, the show was actually received fairly well, critically, and it was even nominated for a Daytime Emmy award and two Golden Reel awards.

I only found that the reason the reruns stopped were because Disney replaced them, along with reruns of Fillmore! And Buzz Lightyear, with a block of Recess.

This movie is sorta a reverse Atlantis 2 or Cinderella 2. Whereas those movies were three episode long pilots to TV series that would never be, this is a three episode long series finale chimera of sorts. It’s made of the final three episodes of The Legend of Tarzan. The segments are mended together through Jane talking to Terk and Tantor about what she should do for Tarzan and her first wedding anniversary.

I will never understand these types of stories . When you think about it, it is literally just the main characters sitting down for a half hour per segment explaining an event in detail when they were all there for it. This whole movie could be finished in a few lines.

“I was thinking of throwing a party.”

“That might make Tarzan uncomfortable. Remember the last time you tried to introduce him to English culture?”

“Oh yeah. That didn’t go well. Well, maybe we can exchange gifts.”

“Gifts? Like diamonds!? Remember the last time Tarzan got you a diamond?”

“Oh yeah. That was a disaster. What about a nice dance?”

“I don’t think so. Remember the last time Tarzan danced?”

“Err, right, I guess. Well, I guess we’ll do nothing. Thanks for destroying my marriage, Terk!”

END.

What’s even weirder is that they’re also explaining events they could have no knowledge of because they weren’t there. Like how does Terk know in detail things that happened in scenes with only Tarzan and the professor? Did they write a transcription of the conversation?

What’s particularly strange about this is that these episodes aren’t lost or anything, nor was the movie released as the finale and then separated into episodes like Kim Possible’s finale…the first finale anyway…..it is merely the final three episodes of the TV series, released prior to the movie, made into flashbacks with some new footage put between them as a framing device.

So, essentially, this movie is trying to rip kids off. If the kid was a fan of the show and wanted to see the new movie, they’d feel really screwed because they’d merely be watching a full episode clip show of the end of the series instead of an actual movie.

I’d almost say that The Legend of Tarzan was just not a profitable series at all, so they decided to release this ‘movie’ to milk a little more cash out of it. They already have 95% of the animation in their archive, just make the framing device and cash in.

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The movie starts off with Jane and Tarzan playing around in the trees when she suddenly decides to leave. She tells Terk, who sounds pretty bad, by the way, and Tantor that she plans to make a nice party for their first anniversary. Terk and Tantor say that might not be a good idea and use a previous run-in with British customs to assert their claim. Thus they relay the entire story to Jane; a story she was entirely present for while Terk and Tantor were barely in it.

Then our first segment begins. Our first segment or episode is one titled in the series as Tarzan and the British Invasion. Jane’s three prim and proper friends from finishing school come to the island to ‘save’ Jane from the ‘wild man’ they had somewhat misheard about. They’re weirded out yet understanding about Jane’s decision to live in the jungle with her new husband the ‘wild man’.

Tarzan obviously makes the girls uncomfortable with his less than proper manners and actions, but both parties remain civil. When Tarzan leaves to get some food, the girls claim that Jane has changed and don’t show much appreciation for the life she has in the jungle. In an effort to prove to her friends that she hasn’t changed, she prepares a fancy picnic for them the following day.

Jane invites Tarzan along, but he feels like she’s embarrassed by him, especially when she tries to get him to wear his father’s old suit. He refuses to go, and Jane goes to the picnic without him.

Jane starts her picnic with her friends when the panthers, Nuru and Sheeta, attack. They manage to escape, but find themselves lost in the jungle.

Meanwhile, Tarzan has a conversation with Jane’s father about the situation. He tells Tarzan that Jane has done everything to adapt to his life, ways and customs, so doing the same for her for one day shouldn’t be that big of a deal. He agrees and goes off to change into his suit for the picnic. However, when he arrives at the spot, he finds the picnic ruined and determines that Nuru and Sheeta attacked, chasing the women into the jungle.

Back with Jane, she starts getting back into her jungle groove as she tries to do everything in her power to navigate her friends back while also trying to keep them safe. When the panthers arrive again, Tarzan shows up to fight them off. Eventually, the panthers are beaten, Jane is reunited with Tarzan, and all of the women get the hots for him.

Jane’s friends bid her goodbye having now accepted and fully understood why she lives the life that she lives. Tarzan asks if she ever gets homesick and while she admits that she does miss London sometimes, she’s become a different person in the jungle, and she likes it.

This episode is actually pretty good. Tarzan in particular got some surprisingly funny lines. I put that mostly on his voice actor, Michael T. Weiss, as his delivery for some of the lines was really hilarious.

“Actually, I never knew my parents. They were murdered by the leopard, Sabor.”

*gasp*

“In this room.”

*gasp!*

“Right there!”

And simply;

“I GOT FRUIT!” If that could be applied anywhere as a meme, I’d really want that to happen.

The story was predictable but also pretty well done. I’m glad that while Jane’s friends were believable prim and proper ‘ladies’ they weren’t bitches like I expected them to be. They’re legitimately Jane’s friends, and while they may get a bit fed up with the jungle world sometimes, they try to bite their lip for Jane’s sake.

Jane was also alright, and I understand where she’s coming from. Even if you like what you’ve become, it’s difficult to have someone say to you, in a negative way, that you’ve changed, especially when the people saying it are good friends. She didn’t get into an argument with Tarzan over the suit thing nor is she really ashamed of her husband, she was just trying to get Tarzan to play along in order to prove herself to her friends.

Since Terk and Tantor dash the party idea, Jane suggests that they merely exchange gifts instead. Tantor asks what kinds of gifts men give women in England, and Jane lists off some examples while Terk deduces that one of these gifts is diamonds. Terk then reminds Jane of the last time Tarzan tried to get Jane a diamond, and we get our second segment titled, creatively enough, Volcanic Diamond Mine.

Two crooked diamond hunters enlist Tarzan’s help in getting diamonds from a volcano. Tarzan agrees to help despite his distrust of the men as long as he gets a diamond to give to Jane since he believes she’d want one like the women in England get.

Jane notices Tarzan acting suspicious so she starts tracking him down with her father and Terk—and holy crap, I just now realized that Jane and her father are speaking with the animals…..

My embarrassing obliviousness aside, I’ve never seen the series, but is this ever explained at all? Her Disney Wiki page says nothing about how she and her father acquired this skill. I mean, I suppose Tarzan may have taught her, but she really learned fluent gorilla and elephant in less than a year? That’s even more unbelievable than her learning it period. I guess she and her father must’ve been visited by the shaman from The Wild Thornberrys.

Tarzan and the two diamond hunters arrive at the volcano and start mining diamonds. When Tarzan starts deciding which diamond to keep for Jane, one of the pair claims he’s not getting any diamonds and that they’re going to kill him to protect their diamonds since they don’t trust him. Jane and her father arrive right as Tarzan is being attacked.

The two diamond hunters exit the cave but not before blowing the place up to kill Tarzan. While their plan failed miserably as they now have no way of retrieving the diamonds either, Tarzan, Jane and the professor survive. However, the explosion triggered a volcanic eruption.

Using a pick and some rope left behind, Tarzan and the others make it out of the cave and through the top, but the magma continues to rise. Then we get something completely stupid. Tarzan breaks off a piece of stone from the side of the volcano and surfs the magma wave. This is so nonsensical even the characters are questioning it.

Jane: “Is this…possible?”

Professor: “Who cares as long as it’s working!?”

I can give them being so close to all this magma without burning up, but riding it on a stone like a wave of water is just silly.

The diamond hunters are cornered up a tree by crocodiles as the lava makes it way towards them, but Tarzan swings by on a vine that I suppose is just held up by the clouds and saves them.

They’re later arrested, I supposed for attempted murder, and the segment ends.

Jane asks what the story has to do with her present idea, something I was also wondering as one bad experience with a diamond shouldn’t give you diamond PTSD. Terk and Tantor then explain that Tarzan felt really bad when he couldn’t get her a gift he thought she should have for their wedding. The same will happen if he finds out he has nothing to give her for their anniversary.

Well….uh, tell him about it so he actually has a chance to get a present? This is different from the diamond because he had already been married to Jane for some time and felt bad that she missed all the English wedding stuff, especially the diamond ring. He has plenty of time to make a gift, doesn’t he? Or to find one? Maybe his mother had some jewelry, I dunno. He doesn’t have a chance to feel bad about not getting a gift for their anniversary if he knows about it and gets a gift in time.

….And again, why did this story start as an anti-diamond point? She just gave precious stones such as diamonds as an example of a gift a man would give a woman as an anniversary present. She didn’t say the diamond thing was tradition, unlike the wedding ring.

This segment was pretty bad. John O’Hurley voices one of the diamond hunters. That’s about as notable as it gets.

Otherwise, Tarzan got no funny lines, the story made little sense, the professor was an idiot, and the ending was just silly. It would’ve been nice to see Jane speak with Tarzan about this afterward like saying she doesn’t need a diamond, she’s perfectly happy the way she is, but she appreciates the thought or something. No lesson was had. Hell, we don’t even see Tarzan look disappointed or saddened that he lost his diamond. It just cuts to the hunters being arrested and the segment ends.

Tarzan leading the men to the cave was also out of character. He clearly didn’t trust the two from the start and knew the diamonds were in the volcano. He could’ve somehow gotten one himself without endangering his jungle.

After that, Jane suggests they merely dance under the moonlight. However, her father pops up and says that might be a bad idea. Remember the last time Tarzan danced?

*flashback ripple*

The third segment is called Flying Ace. It starts with Jane’s father making a radio and her and Tarzan dancing to the music when a plane makes an emergency landing nearby. The pilot is Jane’s oldest friend, Robert, and Tarzan immediately doesn’t trust him, claiming he reminds him of the leopard, Sabor. Jane brushes him off saying he’s being irrational, and Terk says he’s just jealous. Jane invites Robert back to the treehouse to catch up while Tarzan stews in the jungle.

As they’re having a nice time, Robert noticeably snoops for something. He tells Jane that he’s looking for a music box he gave her right before he left for Africa. He’d like it back to give to someone else back home. She finds it, opens it up to check if it works and they decide to relive their old days in dance class by having a dance to the music.

Tarzan walks in on them and gets very jealous before storming out. Robert says it might be best if he took the music box and left, and Jane sadly agrees. A tiny monkey runs past her feet, causing her to drop the music box, which makes it crack open revealing a code machine.

Robert reveals himself to be a double agent and the music box contains codes from the English military that he’s selling to the non-descript ‘other side’. Jane tries to get away with the music box, but she ultimately gets captured by Robert and they leave on his plane.

Meanwhile, Tarzan saves a British Airman who has been tailing Robert but was shot down by him in the start of the episode. Now realizing that Robert is indeed a bad man and it wasn’t merely him being jealous, Tarzan pursues the airplane. He somehow manages to spear the plane in mid air and climbs up the attached vine to take out Robert. Jane is forced to try to fly the plane with radioed assistance by her father.

She manages to keep it steady for a while, but loses control as it reaches a waterfall. Tarzan somehow manages to keep the plane from falling by spearing a nearby tree and wrapping a vine around the tail. Robert escapes with the music box, threatening to cut the vine if they pursue him, though he’d be too far away to do it if they just waited a few seconds for him to run.

Tarzan tries to keep the plane from falling as the vine starts to snap, and Jane hangs above the propellers, nearly getting sliced up. Robert hears her screams and decides his old friend is more important than selling the information, so he returns to the plane and saves her.

Tarzan is knocked off of the vine by a log, and the plane falls. However, Robert is able to pilot it safely back to shore. Robert is arrested by the agent, and we cut back to present time where the professor points out how hurt Tarzan was when he saw Jane and Robert dancing together, so them dancing together would just open old wounds.

Really? You had to tell the entire story from start to finish for that flimsy excuse? You could’ve just said ‘Remember when Tarzan saw you dancing with your old friend, Robert? He was very hurt, and dancing with you again might open those wounds.’ And honestly, what the hell is all this? This entire movie is ‘Tarzan can’t do this thing that was mildly connected to this 20 minute long story I’m about to tell because Tarzan kinda felt bad about it somewhere I think.’

Tarzan can’t throw a party, not even a non-traditional English one, because he didn’t fit in with Jane’s friends that one time. Completely ignore that he came to understand that he should try to do things from Jane’s culture just as she lives in his culture. Also ignore that the end of the story was a good one, and her friends came to respect and understand Tarzan.

Tarzan can’t give any presents because he felt bad that he wasn’t able to get Jane a diamond that one time.

Tarzan can’t dance because, despite the fact that he clearly had a lot of fun with Jane the last time he danced with her, he saw her innocently dancing with an old friend and had a drama fit.

Hey, let’s make the movie longer.

Jane: “Okay, what about a nice romantic dinner?”

Terk: “Dinner!? Remember the last time Tarzan ate food?”

*20 minute long story*

Terk: “That tummy ache he got made him slightly uncomfortable for a few hours! If he eats again, it could bring up bad memories.”

*cut to dead Tarzan*

Anyway, the movie’s not over. Jane laments that she can’t seem to do anything for her anniversary and now it’s night time. You guys seriously bored her with these overly long stories that she was present for…all day? Wow.

She continues to mope as she reaches the treehouse when she’s surprised by all of the gorillas throwing a party for her. Tarzan walks up to her in his father’s suit wishing her a happy anniversary. Jane deduces that Terk, Tantor and the professor knew what they were up to all along, and I guess they were meant to keep her busy while they prepared the party.

Nope, it still doesn’t change the fact that the rest of the movie has been dumb because Jane found all of the excuses perfectly logical.

Not only that, but Tarzan has a gift for her; a diamond ring, made with a diamond from the volcano cave…..one he shouldn’t have since all of the diamonds melted in the volcano, and the cave was destroyed in the eruption. Also, that’s quite the perfectly cut diamond you ‘found’. Where did he get the ring to go with it? The trading post?

And finally, they dance as the party goes on. And Kala’s there. She has no lines, and the art makes her nearly impossible to point out, but there ya go.

The party concludes with some random out of place pop song, Tarzan and Jane kiss. The end.

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This movie…I don’t even want to call this a movie. It’s three random episodes of The Legend of Tarzan taped together with a framing device that doesn’t even make sense most of the time. I will admit that the ending does kinda make up for the stupidity of the framing device up until that point, but not very much considering Jane found so much logic in those excuses that she ended up doing nothing for her anniversary.

If I just want to take all of the new footage as a movie, making this a very short movie out of a very short movie (1 hour, 12 minutes with credits.), then it’s just….boring. You know the movie won’t end with them doing nothing for their anniversary. Tarzan cares too much about Jane to leave her hanging in the wind.

He’d obviously do something to make her happy in his own way. Was him getting dressed up, throwing a party, getting a diamond and dancing with her showing that he’s gotten over his problems with these things to make Jane happy or was it a bunch of lies to stall Jane? If it’s the latter, that makes the rest of the movie even more pointless. It’s almost like they were stalling the audience too until they wrapped it up.

This isn’t a horrible watch for someone who’s never watched the TV series because the stories themselves weren’t that bad. In fact, they were fairly entertaining. I’d definitely say the first segment is the best, the third is second place and the second is the worst.

It’s how they poorly melded the segments with the framing that made them seem bad. But, in the end, the only audience who would really watch this are mostly people who have seen the series. And those people would feel ripped off for getting about 10 minutes of movie and 55 minutes of show they’ve already watched.

The art and animation are definitely not up to the movie standards. Hell, not even Tarzan 2 standards. It’s got that TV series ick to it, but it’s not as bad as it could be. Some of the scenes with falling CGI objects were pretty bad, though.

The voice acting is also fine for the most part. Tarzan doesn’t get any more fun line reads after segment one, Jane’s fine, Tantor sounds exactly as he did in the first movie, and Terk can choke on a porcupine. I not only don’t like Terk as a character, but they somehow found someone more annoying than Rosie O’donnell to voice her.

The music is also…fine. The male/female redo of ‘Two Worlds’ was a little pop-ish for my tastes, and I just couldn’t get into the final pop song thing, even with Terk and the gorillas kinda making a callback to ‘Trashin’ the Camp.’

Bottom Line: If you haven’t seen the series and like Tarzan, give a quick watch I guess as the individual stories are pretty okay. Don’t expect much of the movie itself, though.

As for those who have seen the series, really don’t bother at all.

Recommended Audience: There are numerous guns, but no one gets shot. Nothing else beyond that, really. 6+

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Dissecting the Disquels: 101 Dalmatians 2 – Patch’s London Adventure

Plot: Patch, one of the 99 puppies from the previous movie, is sick and tired of being overlooked due to him having so many brothers and sisters. As the family and dogs move, Patch is accidentally left behind, and he takes this as his opportunity to run away.

Along the way, he meets his idol, the actor dog behind the TV action character, Thunderbolt. He has recently discovered that his character is going to be killed off the show, so he recruits Patch to help him do real-life heroic deeds to get his job back.

Meanwhile, Cruella, fresh out of prison, is trying to follow her parole conditions of not being near furs or dogs by visiting an art show. She sees the art of Lars, who particularly does works of art showing black spots on a white background, something right up Cruella’s alley. However, Lars is having difficulty creating more of those same works for her, so she recruits her old henchmen to kidnap the Dalmatian puppies for inspiration for Lars.

Breakdown: Okay, let’s get this out of the way; I really have no emotional attachment to the original 101 Dalmatians movie nor its live action sequels nor this animated sequel.

101 Dalmatians was a movie that was just kinda there to me as a kid. It’s a movie about two Dalmatians, Pongo and Perdy, giving birth to a litter of puppies. A woman fittingly named Cruella de Vil wants to skin the puppies to make a fur coat. She kidnaps the 15 puppy litter and buys/kidnaps 84 other Dalmatian puppies. The movie’s one big chase scene after that’s been established, and of course the puppies are fine in the end with the excess 84 puppies being adopted by Pongo and Perdy’s owners.

Nothing really that notable or memorable barring a song and a few scenes if you ask me. I still start singing ‘Cruella de Vil’ randomly on occasion. Also, taking the concept as a whole, it really seems like a huge milking of people who have a love of everything cute puppy. Hey, if one puppy’s cute, why not 99?

As for this sequel, I don’t remember if I’ve ever seen it before, but its pretty generic. Patch, one of the 99 Dalmatian puppies, feels like he’s overlooked since he has so many brothers and sisters. He gets left behind on accident while the family moves away (Because Pongo’s apparently an idiot father who thinks “anyone who’s not here, speak up” is a legit way of figuring out if anyone’s missing) Seeing this as a the final straw, Patch embraces the newfound freedom and runs off. He meets his idol, the acting dog Thunderbolt, who befriends him.

The story can be condensed in a nutshell easily. After Patch meets Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt finds out that his character in his show will be killed off soon, which spirals him into a panic. He gets the idea that he should get his job back by performing heroic acts for the cameras and papers in real life. He meets up with Patch and they do not-so-heroic deeds that reflect his actions in the TV show.

His overlooked sidekick, Lightning, takes this opportunity to steal the limelight for the show.

Meanwhile, Cruella has gotten out of prison early and has a restraining order against her. She’s barred from buying furs as a restriction on her parole, and she decides to get her Dalmatian fill by obsessing over a local artist’s work since it’s all black and white spots. She doesn’t get enough of his work however, and calls her cronies, who somehow got a worse prison sentence than her, back from prison to kidnap the puppies for her to get inspiration for more artwork….Seems kinda moot to kidnap the puppies to make art that she intends to use to keep her from kidnapping puppies, but we needed a story.

Obviously only Patch and Thunderbolt can save the day here. Patch finds out Thunderbolt’s a fake, he rescues the puppies on his own by emulating more Thunderbolt episodes with minor help from Thunderbolt, Cruella gets arrested, Pongo and Perdy are reunited with their puppies, and we get an abrupt ending.

Not much really happens, but here are my notes anyway.

– Do these puppies ever age? I mean, taking the live action sequels and the time skip in this movie, the puppies must be at least a year or two old now. They haven’t grown in the least. I know 101 Dalmatians is all about PUPPIES! *YAY! But still.

– The art style is quite similar to the original. However there is a distinct air of TV series style…Apparently this was indeed a spin-off to a Disney Channel animated series. I honestly don’t remember there even being a 101 Dalmatians animated series, in the least, but okay. Thunderbolt apparently seems to be a character in that series too. After looking up shots from the show, the art is way worse in the TV series.

– Perdy: “Finally; no more counting!” I think you guys have this whole thing backwards. Having 99 puppies living in a small house makes them relatively easy to keep track of. Having them living on a huge ranch with what seems like no fences with two houses/one house one garage makes it imperative to count them now.

– I realize now that this movie seems like a mix between the plots of Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp’s Adventure and The Fox and the Hound 2…

– It’s a little sad that they never realized on their own that Patch was missing. They needed to see him on the front of a newspaper to even realize he was gone. It’s even weirder when you really think about it. They know Patch so well that they instantly recognize him in a picture despite having 99 puppies who mostly look the same. (You could say that the black on his eye is a giveaway, but lots of Dalmatian puppies have that.) Yet they never realized he was missing.

– Why do Pongo and Perdy know that Cruella’s going to go after the puppies again? For all they know, she’s still in jail.

– Don’t understand why Patch is unforgivably mad at Thunderbolt yet is still obsessed with the TV show. He’s even still trying to emulate Thunderbolt. Guess the message here is that emulating TV shows, even the incredibly dangerous stunts, is A-Okay!

– Also, as he’s trying to save the other puppies, Patch leaves Thunderbolt there with the crazy woman who likes to skin dogs. Our hero!

– Oh and they took a scene directly from The Lion King. Remember when Simba as a cub ‘roars’ at the hyenas, they corner and laugh at him for his pitiful roar then he tries to roar a second time, this time it’s huge and powerful, and they see Mufasa roaring instead? Same. Exact. Scene. Only instead of Simba cub – Patch, Hyenas – Cruella and her henchmen, and Mufasa – Thunderbolt. Also roar – bark.

Bottom Line: All in all, this is a fairly okay family flick, but it’s predictable, has little story to it, though I will admit moreso than the first movie, and its just really an ‘oh look, cute puppies!’ novelty.

The music’s better than many other Disney Sequels, though we don’t get any follow up to ‘Cruella de Vil’ nor do we get any real memorable songs. The voice acting’s okay. We have Barry Bostwick playing Thunderbolt, Jason Alexander playing Lightning and Martin Short as the artist guy, Lars. The kid playing Patch doesn’t seem to be very energetic even when he goes all fanboy.

If you were a fan of the first, you’ll probably like this movie. I just can’t seem to connect with these movies, and this is coming from an animal lover; particularly a dog person.

Recommended Audience: Skinning puppies may have been mentioned once or twice. If just mentioning that seriously bothers you, 7+, if not E for everyone.

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