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Pocahontas
List Price: Unknown [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Movie:
Only recently have I begun to be impressed by the storytelling and animation of films like "Prince Of Egypt" and even the comedy of "Bug's Life" or "Antz". Animation may not have been as advanced now as it was a few years ago, but films like "Pocahontas" brought neither an interesting story or remarkable animation to the table.
What they do have is a story that takes too long to get started. Revolving around the expedition by settlers to Virginia, John Smith(Mel Gibson) meets Pocahontas(Irene Bedard). History is certainly not a concern in the telling of this tale, which makes up its own story as it goes along, throwing in a song and dance number every few minutes. And what would a Disney movie be without cute little sidekicks? Here we get a little racoon and hummingbird. Both have more personality than most of the main characters.
Even at 81 minutes, "Pocahontas" feels overlong, with a number of sections that drag on. Kids apparently enjoyed this feature, as it was one of the more successful animated efforts from Disney in recent years. Personally, I thought it was pretty dull from point A to point B.
The DVD
VIDEO: Another effort in the Disney Junk (er, sorry, I meant "Gold". My bad.) Collection, and it's as underwhelming as the majority of its counterparts. It's still "Tarzan" and "A Bug's Life"(which was the work of Pixar, not Disney) that stand out as the remarkable works for animation on DVD from the studio; everything else has been forgettable or unimpressive at best. Add "Pocahontas" to that list. Images are soft and lack detail and definition; and clarity could be slightly improved. Some of the darker scenes even look a little bit murky. Colors are a pleasing, if not remarkable element, though. Colors look nice, but occasionally there is some color bleeding.
There are some noticable problems with shimmering, but only on occasion and not consistently; the image does consistently look grainy, though. There are some little marks and other problems with the print used, too. This is watchable stuff, but with studios making enormously successful transfers of both live action and animated material, why should we be willing to accept just "ok". With this, Disney really cements their reputation, in my mind, as the major studio with the least successful product.
.
SOUND: Unlike the picture quality, there's essentially nothing wrong with the sound quality, although it's really doesn't take advantage of sound in general like it could have. Sounds are mainly from the front, with only subtle and uninteresting surround use. The musical score doesn't leave much of an impression, either. Dialogue is clear, though. Nothing wrong with the audio here, but don't go into it expecting much.
MENUS:: Again, I won't say much about Disney's menu art for their animated titles; they really could do a lot and go further than these uninteresting, bland, non-animated menus.
EXTRAS: With a couple of Disney's past titles("Tarzan" and "A Bug's Life") viewers were able to purchase a 2 DVD special edition that came out a little ways after the first, basic edition. With "Pocahontas", Disney actually announced a special edition along with the basic edition, on the same date. Of course, this was apparently too good to be true, as the special edition is still nowhere to be found as of this review. What we get here is pretty uninteresting. Of course, there are still the forced previews when the movie is inserted, and worse, there's a bunch of them to skip past.
Trailer: The original trailer.
Also: Quiz, 2 music videos("Colors Of The Wind" and "If I Never Knew You") and Read-along.(Yea.)
Final Thoughts: Nothing much to recommend here; the image quality is not great and suffers from some distracting flaws; the sound isn't problematic, but isn't memorable in any way, either. I'd recommend waiting for the special edition release, but I'm not sure if we'll ever see it.
Only recently have I begun to be impressed by the storytelling and animation of films like "Prince Of Egypt" and even the comedy of "Bug's Life" or "Antz". Animation may not have been as advanced now as it was a few years ago, but films like "Pocahontas" brought neither an interesting story or remarkable animation to the table.
What they do have is a story that takes too long to get started. Revolving around the expedition by settlers to Virginia, John Smith(Mel Gibson) meets Pocahontas(Irene Bedard). History is certainly not a concern in the telling of this tale, which makes up its own story as it goes along, throwing in a song and dance number every few minutes. And what would a Disney movie be without cute little sidekicks? Here we get a little racoon and hummingbird. Both have more personality than most of the main characters.
Even at 81 minutes, "Pocahontas" feels overlong, with a number of sections that drag on. Kids apparently enjoyed this feature, as it was one of the more successful animated efforts from Disney in recent years. Personally, I thought it was pretty dull from point A to point B.
The DVD
VIDEO: Another effort in the Disney Junk (er, sorry, I meant "Gold". My bad.) Collection, and it's as underwhelming as the majority of its counterparts. It's still "Tarzan" and "A Bug's Life"(which was the work of Pixar, not Disney) that stand out as the remarkable works for animation on DVD from the studio; everything else has been forgettable or unimpressive at best. Add "Pocahontas" to that list. Images are soft and lack detail and definition; and clarity could be slightly improved. Some of the darker scenes even look a little bit murky. Colors are a pleasing, if not remarkable element, though. Colors look nice, but occasionally there is some color bleeding.
There are some noticable problems with shimmering, but only on occasion and not consistently; the image does consistently look grainy, though. There are some little marks and other problems with the print used, too. This is watchable stuff, but with studios making enormously successful transfers of both live action and animated material, why should we be willing to accept just "ok". With this, Disney really cements their reputation, in my mind, as the major studio with the least successful product.
.
SOUND: Unlike the picture quality, there's essentially nothing wrong with the sound quality, although it's really doesn't take advantage of sound in general like it could have. Sounds are mainly from the front, with only subtle and uninteresting surround use. The musical score doesn't leave much of an impression, either. Dialogue is clear, though. Nothing wrong with the audio here, but don't go into it expecting much.
MENUS:: Again, I won't say much about Disney's menu art for their animated titles; they really could do a lot and go further than these uninteresting, bland, non-animated menus.
EXTRAS: With a couple of Disney's past titles("Tarzan" and "A Bug's Life") viewers were able to purchase a 2 DVD special edition that came out a little ways after the first, basic edition. With "Pocahontas", Disney actually announced a special edition along with the basic edition, on the same date. Of course, this was apparently too good to be true, as the special edition is still nowhere to be found as of this review. What we get here is pretty uninteresting. Of course, there are still the forced previews when the movie is inserted, and worse, there's a bunch of them to skip past.
Trailer: The original trailer.
Also: Quiz, 2 music videos("Colors Of The Wind" and "If I Never Knew You") and Read-along.(Yea.)
Final Thoughts: Nothing much to recommend here; the image quality is not great and suffers from some distracting flaws; the sound isn't problematic, but isn't memorable in any way, either. I'd recommend waiting for the special edition release, but I'm not sure if we'll ever see it.
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