Good movie, although historically incorrect

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 2002)

After falling in love with The Lion King, my family and I ventured to see Pocahontas. Pocahontas, though not as brilliant as The Lion King, in short, was a good movie. It was emotional. It was moving. It featured a handsome young man (John Smith) falling in love with a beautiful Indian woman (Pocahontas). What more could you want? Touching, sweet, memorable...but incorrect. In actual history, there was no love between Pocahontas and John Smith. There was no rugged, blond young man or beautiful woman...instead, there was a young 10- to 12-year-old girl and a red-headed Smith who was a strict leader of his Jamestown crew. Not the 1995 film Disney produced...
In the box, without reference to its historical inaccuracy, Pocahontas was good...but a tad more serious than the movies before it. It didn't feature a character as goofy as Aladdin's Genie, nor did it play upon comedy, like Aladdin and various scenes from The Lion King.
The characters of Pocahontas were not as strong as other Disney movie characters either. While Pocahontas was strong and daring, I felt her character did not completely develop itself. It settled more on the love between her and John Smith. Governor Ratcliffe was indeed wicked, but certainly not as terrorizing as Ursula (The Little Mermaid) or Scar (The Lion King). Nor did I grow to love many of the characters... there was some stiffness about John Smith, and while Meeko made me laugh, I wished Percy and Flit would lighten up. And Nakoma, Pocahontas' best friend, did not play much of best friend. She was hardly in the movie, but when she was in a scene, I often wished she wasn't.
The music was all right, but it definitely was not the music of Aladdin. The animation was all right as well...I love the colored leaves that floated towards the ship at the end of the film.
Pocahontas, in short, was a good movie. But I felt it didn't have the spark the movies before it did. And sadly, the movies after it, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hercules, lacked whatever spark Pocahontas had as well.