Pioneering for Disney's cultural diversity, an animation wonder with still relevant messages today. Not historically accurate but it never meant to be.

Rating: 8/10 (1 May 2020)

A mesmerizing spectacle of colors, contrasting cultures, music and absurdly-well animated characters. While not historically accurate, at the time it meant Disney was finally focusing on making more culturally diversed movies with an almost pitch-perfect tale of two people from different worlds who when meeting opened their hearts and had an eye-opening realisation: that they weren't so different after all.
While those who criticise this movie would do so by comparing the historical accuracy of the historical figures these characters are meant to portray, need I remind them that it is a loose adaptation of the story in the same way Disney has adapted every single film ever since they began making them.
There are tons of documentaries faithful to the story and tons of books that can be researched for a more historically accurate depiction of the characters. Animated movies have thrived on using colors to emote, nature-based symbolism and many child-friendly "gimmicks" for the younger audiences to provide engaging and heartfelt stories that would speak not only to them but adults too. Even if the age of Pocahontas was different and she wasn't "over-sexualized" as some have put it, would it still be okay for them to see her with 3 animal friends, a grandma willow tree that talks and the incredibly mesmerizing colors of the wind?
Surely, some of the logistics of the story may be hard to grasp at first, for instance how would two different cultures communicate in the same language, but just like Disney gave voices to animals in many of their movies in order to make it more accesible to children especially, here a sequence was dedicated to sort of "explain" how would they actually communicate. And so goes for other elements that might seem ilogical, the movie is not trying to be a perfect depiction of native americans and the arrival of english men to their shores, it is a tale that serves as a vessel for an important message involving interracial interactions and acceptance of what is different and unknown to us.
All in all, many animated movies, and especially Disney, have never been known to have the most accurate adaptations to the source material. Granted, it might be wrong to use well-known historical figures or fictional characters and stories to tell a tale that would otherwise also function and have the same impact if the main character wasn't called Pocahontas, but it's not like Disney is known for that. So for those who complain about this sort of thing, I might as well tell you that I'm personally a big Spider-Man fan and to this day there hasn't been a non-animated faithful adaptation of the source material but that didn't take away from the gratification of seing its essence captured in the ones that were made.
IN CONCLUSION, don't judge a book by its cover, this movie is well-paced, well written and acted, the animation is so engaging and hypnotic it still holds today and the themes from the symbolism of the arrow to the non-conflict-but-deep-resolution conclusion is original and impactful. The movie is meant to be taken lightly as some aspects are glanced over and most pieces fall into place in many occasions, but the songs are not forced and enhance the message it tries to send, the characters feel real and I just can't get over the little gestures and mannerisms in the animation of the characters. It is a classic of animation and a trully well-crafted movie.