Brilliant for kids, hilarious for adults!!! A MUST-SEE!!

Rating: 10/10 (13 June 2009)

You can see Pocahontas from many sides. For kids you can enjoy the animals being silly and the cheesy dialogue, as a child is fun all the way. However for an adult, you can also see it as educative not historically, but in the lessons of prejudice and violence. The critics who say the film is racist are idiots, because the film favours both races, as both don't want to fight except for one or two individuals which represent those in society who try to disrupt peace. The way i viewed was that it is a very funny film, and i think all adults will be humoured by the way John Smith is supposed to be good looking and his macho-arrogance. Also the way Pocahontas is the only attractive girl Captain Radcliffe.
Don't sit to watch this film expecting a historical account of the English colonising America, watch it a for a barrel of laughs and Disney does not disappoint!
So! The film stars very cleverly with a 19600 style painting which turns into a real scene of a ship setting sail for the new world, accompanied by a simple song which sets the tone of the period. Here we meet the villain Radcliffe and the hero John Smith ( voiced brilliantly by Mel Gibson). Already you will laugh at the way Smith effortlessly swings around on the ship ropes with total ease and showing off his strength. But wait it gets funnier, the ship gets caught in a storm half way across the Atlantic, and the weakest sailor Tom ( voiced by Batman Christian Bale) falls overboard. And who saves the day? JOHN SMITH! Yes the hunk himself dives miles into the sky, plunging into an angry ocean of epic waves, and saves pathetic Tom!! I know it isn't supposed to be realistic, but you've gotta laugh. Plus Smith's mane blonde hair that looks like a dodgy wig and penetrating blue eyes, ( clearly trying to go for the Paul Newman good looks here).
Nevertheless an action packed start!
This is where the genius of Disney's animators, editors and composer ( Alan Menken) come through, for after the horrendous noise of the storm and the dramatic saving of Tom, it all disappears into a fog, silence, the fog lifts to reveal a calm, warm shore with still blue waters and tall green trees, accompanied by a slow beating drum ( mystery as to what lurks on this land). Then comes a choir of tribes people singing a tribal song. We are immediately now transported from the greys, and the noise of the modern world, to the vibrant colours and tranquility of the undiscovered world.
From here on, the film is a real credit to it's makers.
Pocahontas is a beautiful woman, with long jet black hair, a gazelle-like figure, and a good spirit. You immediately like her not just because of her beauty but at her determination to improve relations between both worlds. What she sees in John Smith, lord knows lol!! John Smith is totally mesmerised by the dark beauty, and though at first we may not like him, his love for Pocahontas changes our minds.
Other characters like Powhatan, Grand mother Willow, Nikoma and the animals all add a depth to the story and really contribute to an atmosphere of spirits ( Pocahontas' mother in the movie is actually the wind).
The star of this movie however is without a doubt the score composed by the ever-so talented Alan Menken. Songs like " Just Around the Riverbend" and "Colours of the Wind" are worthy of any other great Disney song, and "Savages" is an intense number, which shows the collision of two hates, with flame and smoke symbolising warfare, and the end of the new world with the colonisation of the modern world. The best song in the movie is the one played during the End Cred its, "If I Never Knew You", a truly beautiful love song that captures the essence of the film and the love between Poc and Smith.
All in all, this is a very underrated movie, one of Disney's finest, with a good moral message in it as well, it is a must-see for all children out there. As for us adults, it's educative to us too, but more so, it makes you giggle.
WATCH OUT! The Special Edition DVD almost ruins the film, as they integrate the song If I Never Knew You into the film. Unlike with Beauty and the Beast where they composed a completely new scene, animators put it into two very intense. moving and important scenes. Both where Pocahontas speaks to Smith in the tent where he is imprisoned, and her final farewell to him at the end of the film, have them both singing this song. It overcheeses the love ridiculously, and to have Smith singing "... I'd have lived my whole life throoooooooooough", with this never ending note, when he is practically dying of a gun-shot wound is just stupid and ruins it for all of us who love the original.
So I advice to buy the one-disc DVD with the original, and not the two-disc special edition which ruins the movie.