A Great Film! ...At First Glance...

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2004)

Pochahontas tells the story of a Native American girl who, with her tribe, lives on the coast of the eastern United States when the British arrive in their attempts to colonize the area. Curious because of a dream she's been having lately, she follows on of the Englishmen, John Smith, and the two fall in love. They have to work together to stop a war between the native tribe and the English, caused by their bias for each other.
On the surface, this is a great Disney film. It has all the ingredients - good songs, good animation, cute love story. However, there are several issues with the film:
Firstly, and I know many of you are sick of hearing this, but the historical inaccuracies. I know that Disney makes changes to everything, and they have to - they make children's movies! If kids saw the original version of The Little Mermaid, they'd probably be horrified! But I just can't overlook how much is brushed over in this film. I'm sure most of you are aware of the true story of Pochahontas - twelve years old, kidnapped by John Smith, carried back to England where she died of TB on the day she was supposed to leave and go back to North America, etc etc etc. I completely understand that Disney couldn't very well make *that* into a movie, but yet, every time I watch Pochahontas, the actually history plays in the back of my head.
But hey, it's a kids movie. They don't know this stuff.
My other problem is that Pochahontas is the start of the downfall of Disneys classic animation. You can see obvious cracks in what used to be fantastic films, and Pochahontas is the beginning of that. The songs, while great, feel forced in this movie - you sit there and question why they're just singing in the woods. Previous Disney movies pulled off the songs without you wondering such thing. Then there's the storyline.
While Pochahontas would definitely be considered "Classic Disney," particularly in comparison to animated toons they're producing today (Not all bad, but definitely different!), it has a definitive "feel" which separates it from it's predecessors. My only explanation is the seriousness of the plot. While all previous Disney films had serious issues going on in their plots, they still remained lighthearted. "Pochahontas" has to rely on a raccoon and a humming bird to provide the occasional comedic relief. For the rest of the film, you have America's predominantly white population having to watch about how their ancestors were murderers, and apparently cared about nothing more than gold (A generalization I didn't appreciate. While I understand that what the Europeans did to North America's natives was horrible, I find it hard to believe that every single person coming out of Europe had a cash register for a heart, and didn't care about the land at all). I'm not denying the validity of the topic, but it's a bit too heavy material for kids.
I like "Pochahontas." While not being one of my all-time favourites, it's still a dang good Disney film, and it will always be considered a classic. However, this film can be plotted as the exact moment when the face of Disney began to change, and thus started it's relial on computer animation as opposed to classic, hand-drawn animation.