Probably the biggest letdown of all the animated Disney films I saw in my childhood

Rating: 5/10 (16 February 2008)

Being a big Disney fan as a kid, I saw this movie on the big screen during the summer of 1995, when I was just under nine years old. It had been a year since I had gone to see "The Lion King", an excellent film which I got a copy of on video shortly after it first came into stores. However, I was probably less impressed with "Pocahontas" than I had been with any other Disney film I had seen before. Because of that, I never saw it again until over a decade later, after rediscovering Disney. Unfortunately for me, I have found that the movie really isn't much different for me now than it was back when it was in theatres.
In 1607, John Smith leads a crew from England to the "New World" in search for gold. Meanwhile, in the land where this crew is headed, Chief Powhatan wants his daughter, Pocahontas, to marry Kocoum, a great warrior who has just lead the tribe to victory in a battle. However, Pocahontas thinks Kocoum is too "serious", and does not wish to marry him. Lately, she has been having a recurring dream about a spinning arrow, and believes it means that change is about to come. Seeking advice, she goes and speaks to Grandmother Willow, a talking tree, who tells her to listen to her heart. Very soon, change does come when Smith and his crew arrive on western shores, near the village where Pocahontas and her tribe live! As unlikely as it may seem, when Pocahontas and John Smith meet, they soon fall in love, but since Pocahontas' tribe and Smith's crew both view each other as enemies, this relationship will be hard to keep!
One problem I have with this mid-nineties Disney effort is that usually when I watch animated Disney films, both early and recent, I can expect some good humour, but not so with this one. There is quite a bit of attempted humour here, usually involving Meeko (Pocahontas' pet raccoon), Flit (a hummingbird), and eventually Percy (a spoiled dog owned by Governor Ratcliffe), but these gags rarely ever work at all. Personally, I think the funniest part is when Grandmother Willow scares two of the sailors off, which doesn't involve any one the three animal characters, but I think I can expect to find funnier gags than that in most of Disney's animated features. Aside from the lack of humour, the story seems pretty shallow at times, and seems like a rather simple commentary on racism. The songs in the film are probably not the worst bunch Disney has even done, but they've certainly done better. The most memorable song is probably "Colours of the Wind".
Some may criticize "Pocahontas" for its historical inaccuracies, but in my opinion, that is certainly not its biggest problem. It have pointed out quite a few things that I think reduce the entertainment value significantly. Now, the film does have some reasonably suspenseful moments here and there, the relationship between Pocahontas and John Smith isn't too bad, and I can't complain about the animation, but apart from that, it really doesn't have much going for it. There are some Disney films that I don't like as much as I used to, but "Pocahontas" is the only one I can think of that I didn't seem to like much in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a horrible movie that both kids and adults should avoid, but the fact that I didn't even think much of it in my childhood just might really say something.