Return to Neverland (2002)

I’m not a fan of Peter Pan.  Perhaps you’ve noticed.  But it’s popular, and popularity means money, and that means Disneytoon just had to milk the cash cow.  So Return to Neverland exists.  If you thought the Cinderella sequel reviews were salty, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

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Return to Neverland had a bit of a troubled production. Originally, it was entitled Peter and Jane, and continued the story of Wendy’s daughter begun at the end of the original book. Work began in Disneytoon Canada but was largely scrapped when that studio closed. The project resumed under its new title, split between Disneytoon’s Japan and Australia branches. Presumably, they made it work.

This film has the distinction of being one of the very, very few Disneytoon sequels to garner a theatrical release. Not only that, it was moderately successful, and became the third highest grossing movie that week. It garnered a higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes than most of the other sequels, but at 46% that’s really not saying all that much. Critics felt it had lackluster music and an uninteresting story, but praised the effort at including scenes from the original novel that were cut from the movie. Notably (spoilers), they managed to include the iconic “clap if you believe” scene from the play that Walt struggled with.

Shall we go on to see if I’m any nicer to this one than the original?

STORY

Tinker Bell opens the movie, flying around a bunch of clouds shaped like iconography from the original movie. One of these images is a pirate ship that reveals itself to be an actual flying pirate ship, with Peter Pan himself swinging around the rigging. Young Wendy watches the ship fly across the moon overhead, declaring in a voice that sounds nothing like Kathryn Beaumont that she’ll always believe in him because that whole adventure was totally not traumatic at all. Next shot, she’s all grown up and telling stories about the little beast to her own children. Meanwhile, World War II is going on, and I found it interesting that the very war that delayed the original movie is now the historical event to offer context to the sequel. Not for any particular reason, I just found it interesting. Wendy’s husband Edward is drafted into the war and puts the eldest child Jane in charge of looking after Wendy and her little brother Danny.

Years later, London is devastated by the war. It’s actually kind of sad to see a house from something so classic surrounded by rubble with air raid sirens blaring overhead. Well played, movie. The narration makes a point of saying that such dark times make it hard to let loose and use your imagination, as Jane runs through the rubble in a war helmet, her loyal and creatively named dog Nana 2 at her side. She clings to a package in her hand just as the sirens go off. Back home, Wendy looks out at the planes flying overhead and carries little Danny into their bomb shelter. Naturally, she’s worried sick about her daughter, who’s hiding from the bombs under a pile of rubble. Danny’s terrified, so Wendy helps him pretend that the explosions outside are cannons from Hook’s ship. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t think that should be less terrifying, but hey, it works on him so whatever.

Jane makes it safe and sound back to the bomb shelter to Wendy’s great relief. Even the package she risked her life for is unharmed.  Turns out, it’s a birthday present for Danny. And it’s socks. Even Wendy is like “…oh.” But she mitigates Danny’s disappointment by turning the mismatched socks into sock puppets of Peter Pan and Captain Hook. Jane huffs and brushes it all off as nonsense, choosing to listen to the radio for news instead. After a while, though, she takes them off to secretly listen, and the animation changes to follow Wendy’s story about Peter Pan chasing after Hook’s treasure. The two enemies fight and Tinker Bell covers the ship in pixie dust to make it fly away out of Hook’s control. She also punches him in the nose. Rude. The moral of the story is that evil will never win as long as we have “faith, trust, and pixie dust”. Jane, just like her grandfather, brushes it off as poppycock and turns her nose up at the stories. The way it’s presented, though, and Danny and Wendy’s unflinching belief in them, hammers home the moral that hope and faith can overcome even the darkest of times. Like, you know, World War II.

After the bombs are finished, the family returns to the house to get ready for bed. A man knocks on the door to tell Wendy that to get the kids away from the bombs, they’re going to send them away to the country on the morning train. Not the whole family, mind, just the two kids. Because adults are expendable, I guess. I don’t know. Heartbroken, Wendy goes upstairs to break the news to Jane, who doesn’t take it very well. She refuses to leave, because she promised her father she’d take care of the family. Wendy pleads with her to look after Danny and tell him stories so he has some form of joy. At this, Jane explodes, saying “faith, trust, and pixie dust” aren’t real and don’t mean anything. And then the saddest most adorable little voice squeaks from the doorway, “…yes they do” and I’m not going to lie, my heart melted. At a Peter Pan movie. At a Disney sequel. I think there’s something wrong with me.

Jane sticks to her guns and screams that they’re at war, Peter Pan isn’t real, and Danny needs to grow up. Even Wendy is horrified at her harsh words, and Danny runs off crying. Jane curls up on the window seat of her room which, by the way, is the Darling kids’ old nursery, and cries. She finds a little Peter Pan doll lying forgotten on the floor and scoops him up, taking him over to look out at the second star to the right. Out the window on the other side, Wendy is successfully cheering Danny up with more Peter Pan stories. Trucks are outside cleaning up the wreckage from the latest bombing, and life is going on with hope for a better day. But because she lacks that faith, Jane just cries harder.

And then the worst CGI I have ever seen in my life falls from the sky in the form of Hook’s pirate ship. The last scene was actually really poignant and well done, so naturally we have to ruin it, I guess. Wasn’t the point of Tink making the ship fly the second time to get it outside of Hook’s control? Since when can he pilot it with no problem? What is happening? Anyway, pirates crawl out over the roof, swords in hand, but because they fail at life one of them slips on the gutter. Hook gets his hook into the crack of the window and forces it open, waking Jane. He stands there all smug and says, “Hello, Wendy” without registering that her hair and face are completely different. The crew binds and gags her, then throws her into a sack… but Smee, being Smee, apologizes for it. Air raid sirens blare overhead, scaring Hook into retreating onto the ship. And you guys the CGI on the pirate ship escaping looks like it escaped from the set of Ratatoing or something. It’s that bad. And then they fly straight into a… wormhole. Type. Thing. I don’t even know. It’s like if Meatloaf made a video out of clips from the original Peter Pan. 

So that happens.  The Jolly Roger makes a perfect landing in the sea and announces to all the world that he’s using “Wendy” as bait to capture Peter Pan. Smee prances around throwing chum into the water, then throws Jane after it. The smell awakens a giant octopus that Hook is clearly hoping will eat Peter. Cocky as ever, Peter shows up and curbstomps the pirates much to Hook’s and my irritation. Hook reveals to Peter that he has “Wendy” and Peter is horrified and 100% on board with saving her unlike literally every frame of the first one except for the end. The octopus bursts out of the water and Peter dives in after it to grab the bag that he thinks contains his friend. For just a moment, his hat floats up in a cloud of octopus ink, making it look like the octopus won. But if you’re fooled by that you’re really gullible because Disney’s not just going to kill Peter Pan even if Hook is congratulating himself. Peter rises up, crowing, with the bag in his arms.

Tinker Bell, who’s here too I guess, throws pixie dust at the octopus to make it fly, then fall right onto Hook’s head. It imagines Hook as a literal codfish and starts chasing him around the deck of the ship as the poor guy races around trying desperately to escape. The octopus’s suckers make the exact same tick-tock sound as the Crocodile’s tick which begs the question… why not just use the Crocodile? The official excuse is that they couldn’t think of anything else funny to do with it but like… the octopus does nothing different except maybe antagonize everyone and not just Hook. Anyway, Hook is super triggered by the noise and clearly suffering from serious PTSD and in dire need of extensive therapy. The octopus launches Hook into his own brig before going away, and Hook recovers from his panic attack very quickly to scream at his crew.

Peter Pan finds Hook’s trauma hilarious so he’s still laughing when he flies over to a rock to set Jane down. Jane does what I’ve been wanting to do for two reviews now and decks him and oh my god it’s so satisfying to see someone hit him. He doesn’t get the message and gets in really close to her even though she’s backing away because this boy does not understand boundaries. Jane recognizes him and Tinker Bell from the stories and comes to the logical conclusion that she’s dreaming. To his credit, Peter also comes to the logical conclusion that she is not in fact Wendy. And when Peter Pan’s memory is good enough that he can remember faces after this long, you may have an issue. At that moment, Hook starts firing off his cannons because Peter only flew like ten feet away from the ship and its very angry captain. Good job.

As they soar wildly through the clouds to escape, Jane screams that she’s not, in fact, Wendy, but her daughter. That’s all Peter needs to hear to decide she’ll love Neverland because she’s Wendy’s daughter. And one, he and I remember the first movie very differently. Two, he’s taking the idea of Wendy growing up and having a kid way better than in the book or the musical where he sits down and cries about it. As they talk, Peter swoops through Skull Rock, the conspicuously and mercifully empty Native camp, and Mermaid Lagoon. The mermaids are weirdly nice and stroking Jane’s face and stuff but Tink is rubbing her nasty little hands together so it kind of looks like the mermaids are trying to lure Jane to her death? If that’s what’s going on, I’m here for it. Buuuut Peter saves her and decrees that Jane will stay with them forever. Horrified, Tink jumps at him and makes her drop Jane. The two of them laugh hysterically as she falls, and just as Peter stops her from splattering, he utters this gem. “She’s just jealous. All girls get like that around me.” And I just hate him. I hate him so much I… I… I… flames. Flames on the side of my face.

Once he’s successfully stroked his own ego, Peter literally throws Jane inside Hangman’s Tree. She doesn’t even get a chance to recover from the sickening flight before the Lost Boys drop from the ceiling and scare her half to death. Tootles, the skunk, falls right onto her head, even. The boys introduce themselves and spit into their hands to shake hers, and Peter declares that Jane will be their new mother and tell them stories. Because why would she get a say in that? Jane protests as well she should because not only is it insane that Peter thinks that’s his choice, but she’s not a very good storyteller.  And the Lost Boys say they’re not very good at listening. They’d rather run wild playing games.

Disney. Disney.  Listen. The entire point of the Lost Boys’ characters, inasmuch as they have them, is that all they want is to hear stories. It’s kind of the majority of the plot of every other version. They’ll listen to the princess stories. They’ll listen to frickin Hamlet. They love stories. These are not Lost Boys. I don’t know what they are. Weird furries. I don’t know. Not Lost Boys. Peter, however, agrees with them and says forget the stories, they’re going treasure hunting, which is about as out of character as Hook saying blast good form in the original. Though Tootles reminds her of Danny, Jane is determined not to put up with their nonsense and insists on going straight home. Peter notes to the boys that Jane almost acts like a grown up and they gasp in horror.

Cut back to the bottom of the ocean, where the Octopus hears Hook’s voice and gets super excited about it. The man himself is on his ship, preparing to get a massage from Smee because Dustin Hoffman and Bob Hoskins were totally onto something with their relationship in Hook. Smee babbles on about all the “good times” Hook and Peter have had together and all the times Peter humiliated him. I think this is another attempt to get Hook to give up his crusade against the kid but it’s executed really weirdly. Before Hook can choke Smee out for it, though, he hears a tell-tale tick-tock… I mean, pop-pop and loses his mind. He wails that he’s “finally gotten rid of that cursed crocodile” and I just… how? These are the kinds of things you need to go into detail with, Disneytoon. On the flipside, though, they’re making Hook really sympathetic. The dude’s on the verge of total mental collapse and I kind of want to give him a hug. Smee scolds the Octopus away just like he did the Crocodile and again, the monster listens for some reason. Hook decides then and there they’re going to shore to find Peter Pan which begs the question… why are you struggling with this? He’s still in the same hideout they were in 49 years ago. The one you blew up. Which apparently they rebuilt. Disneytoon you’re really bad at this continuity thing.

Jane recognizes that these dumb kids are annoying and self-centered. She checks off everything she needs in her notebook and prepares to make sail on a raft she built offscreen. I’m having war flashbacks to the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 1 and finding that stupid seagull egg. Tink is like good riddance, but Peter just has to know why she’s leaving because he can’t be the problem that would be ridiculous. Apparently, he isn’t, because Jane recounts the whole movie up to this point, with special attention given to the fight. Because he has no concept of familial love, Peter just doesn’t get why she’s getting emotional, but he holds out his hand to shake Jane’s and say goodbye anyway. She sets sail… aaand makes it all of two feet before the raft sinks. She flounders to shore but Peter chooses that moment to tell her the only way home is to fly. Thanks for that, Peter. That would have been nice to know earlier. And Jane can’t fly anyway because she doesn’t believe so that’s unfortunate.

The pirate crew rows ominously ashore through some very thick fog. Smee has some doubts about chasing after this child yet again, but Hook yells at him and effectively shuts him up. And they redouble their efforts to find Peter Pan at the same hideout they learned about last time. Back there, Peter blabbers on and on about how great he is while carrying a doubtful Jane to the top of a cliff. He insists anyone can fly and has Tinker Bell pixie dust the Lost Boys to prove it. Clearly hoping Jane will splatter on the ground, Tink refuses to give any dust to Jane until Peter tells her it’s the only way to get rid of her. And that just seems… odd, on his part. Like, you know your friend gets homicidally jealous of your other friends so you’re going to… encourage it? All right, Peter. The pixie dust doesn’t do the trick because Jane doesn’t have the faith and trust. It does, however, make her sneeze and launches Tinker Bell into a wall.

Hook hears the boys laughing and clues in to their whereabouts. Finally. Peter Spartan kicks Jane off the edge of the cliff in the hopes that she’ll believe she can fly under duress. She does not, instead dropping like a stone and leaving a pretty good dent in the ground. During the fall, her notebook slips out of her pocket, and the Lost Boys start a wild game of keepaway. Meanwhile, Hook starts getting a wonderful, awful idea from Jane’s inability to fly. Jane snatches for her notebook but the boys throw it into Cubby’s mouth and he… swallows it. Whole. All right then. Losing all of her patience with their immaturity, Jane explodes on the Lost Boys, insulting Peter (to Tinker Bell’s ire) and refusing to believe that she’s not dreaming. And she makes a very hamfisted point of saying she especially doesn’t believe in fairies. This is the worst thing anyone could ever say in Neverland. The boys are horrified. The harsh words make Tinker Bell drop out of the air. She’s too weak and woozy to fly, and even the pixie dust is gone from around her. True to Peter Pan lore (for once), those words are enough to kill a fairy, and it’s not looking good for Tink.

Alone and miserable, Jane camps out in the woods, rubbing sticks together for a fire. Mood rain starts falling because of course it does, so she takes shelter in a cave, reflecting on the fight with the brother she may never see again. It’s a heartfelt moment, so of course we smash cut back to Hangman’s Tree, where the Lost Boys are trying to figure out what’s wrong with Tink. In a nice nod to the novel, Slightly plays doctor by “sticking a glass thing in her mouth” and announces that it’s not looking good. Cubby starts bawling until the others tell him to shut his face. A faint jingling noise tells Peter that it’s Jane’s disbelief in fairies that’s killing her, and if they don’t get her to believe her light will go out. Which… they didn’t get that from the fact that it happened right after she said it? Y’all are dumb. Cubby declares that they’re going to make Jane believe by force, even smacking his club on his hand for emphasis. Peter, recognizing that that’s stupid, has a better idea: they’re going to make Jane a Lost Girl.

Deep in the woods, Jane here’s a strange noise. It turns out, it’s Hook sobbing alone on a rock, playing suicidal because he’ll never get to leave Neverland. She doesn’t buy it for a second, even pulling Hook’s own sword on him. He sticks to it, though, saying the only way his crew will let him leave the island is if he finds the treasure Peter Pan stole. Since he knows she can’t fly, he offers to give her her dearest wish and take her to London with him in his ship. She agrees on the very specific condition that he won’t harm a hair on Peter’s head. He even signs a contract that he pulled out of thin air with the plume on his hat. I don’t know, man, cartoon logic. Jane is convinced, and Hook gives her a whistle to signal him when she has the treasure. Then he backs up into the forest in the most ominous and sinister way possible.

Tink tries to stand up in her little tree hollow, but collapses. She catches her reflection in an abalone shell and breaks down into tears, knowing she doesn’t have much time. Meanwhile, the Lost Boys and Peter search everywhere for Jane. There’s a gag here that actually made me laugh out loud where Tootles lifts up a puddle like a pane of glass, and the fish inside looks at the camera like “what just happened?” As it turns out, Jane’s looking for Peter, too, and they run right into each other, apologizing for their behavior the previous night. And they actually manage to compromise in a mature way: Peter offers to make up the notebook thing, and Jane offers to play treasure hunt with them. It’d be a nice moment of character development if Jane didn’t have ulterior motives. He doesn’t know that, though, so he’s totally on board on the condition that she thinks like one of them. They show her around the island and walk her through their daily lives via a truly horrendous musical number. She starts enjoying their wild, carefree lives, which is more than I can say.

The kids come across a cave in the mouth of Skull Rock, and Peter dares Jane to go inside. That’s where she finds the treasure she was sent to find. She pauses for a moment, conflicted over whether or not to rat out her newfound friends. Eventually, she decides to throw the whistle into the water and let Peter live another day. The man himself flies into the cave and announces to the Lost Boys that she found the treasure! He grabs a sword from the chest and pretends he’s knighting Jane, dubbing her an official Lost Girl. The whole bunch celebrates with a reprise of the aforementioned truly awful song, pulling instruments out of absolutely nowhere. And Tootles’ instrument of choice is the discarded whistle. Jane begs him not to blow it, but he does.

Pirates storm the cavern and tie up the Lost Boys. They’re totally deaf to Jane’s pleas not to hurt her friends. In fact, Hook is positively gleeful when he reveals her betrayal to a heartbroken Peter. Jane tries again to save her friends, reminding Hook that he promised not to harm a single hair on Peter’s head. Clearly she really wasn’t paying attention to Wendy’s stories, because if she was, she’d know that Hook will follow the letter of his promises but not the spirit. He plucks a hair off of Peter and declares it the one he won’t harm, but the rest of him is fair game. As the pirate crew hauls him away, Peter snarls that Tink is dying because of Jane. It’s actually a fraught moment, and possibly the most compelling Hook has ever been as a villain. The problem is it feels really out of character. Righteous anger isn’t something I associate with Peter Pan, and I feel like his fruitless struggles were traced off Prince Phillip in Maleficent’s dungeon (I cannot confirm this, it’s just the impression I got). I didn’t get the feeling from the first movie that Peter had a concept of danger or even death, thinking any peril was a game, yet here he’s not even fighting to win. And seeing the normally completely incompetent Hook victorious is just weird.

Horrorstruck, Jane bolts back to Hangman’s Tree to find Tinker Bell’s light completely out. She cradles the pixie’s body in her hands, pleading for her to come back, but it’s no use. She’s gone. She lays her on Peter’s pillow and kneels beside the bed, sobbing. She knows this is all her fault and she’s really messed up this time, and most of all she does believe in fairies. It would be a highly emotionally charged moment… if there was any kind of tension to it.  It’s not even that I can’t stand her. Disney’s not really going to kill Tinker Bell and we all know it.  I get that they were trying to put in the “clap if you believe” scene that Walt struggled so much here, but by the time this came out Tink was such a big deal that we all know they’d never let any harm come to their mascot.  Of course, Jane’s tears bring Tinker Bell back to life. The pixie decides she’s now best buds with the girl who almost killed her and the two race off to save Peter Pan.

The pirate crew has Peter chained to an anchor, ready to keelhaul him. He keeps his head high and tells his Lost Boys, who are tied to the mast, not to let the pirates see them cry. So they scoot to the other side of the mast to sob hysterically. Not really a good time for a gag, movie, but okay.  Jane shows up in the nick of time, but Hook is so not intimidated he makes fun of her for being a little girl. Jerk. Tink flies around Peter’s head to tell him she’s okay. At that moment, he knows everything’s going to turn out fine so his old annoying cockiness comes back in full force. While Tinker Bell searches for the key to Peter’s chains, Jane cuts the Lost Boys free and everyone antagonizes the pirates. Tootles gets the idea to slingshot a gem out of the pirates’ treasure back at them, but using it as a simple projectile wouldn’t be cartoony enough. The pirate chases the gem through the air screaming “Big! Shiny! Mine!” and ends up falling overboard. The other Lost Boys cotton on and all the pirates fall for the exact same trick. Seriously, guys? I mean, same, but seriously?

Also Hook got knocked out at some point that I didn’t write down and he’s been laying on a beam in the rigging this whole time. Jane reaches down his shirt to get the key off his neck but he chooses the worst possible moment to come to and draws his sword. She’s not scared, though. She repeats her mother’s words: he’ll never win as long as they have faith, trust, and pixie dust. Tinker Bell supplies that last one, and Jane trust falls down from the rigging. Just before she hits the water, she does a graceful flip in midair and rises right back up. She can fly! She believes! Her lesson is learned! Even Peter’s stunned. Hook tries not to let her have her moment of victory and swings in to cut her down. He gets her pinned to the mast but Peter cuts his rope and throws the anchor he was bound to right at him. The captain falls right through multiple decks of his ship right on top of the octopus. The beast smashes into the hull and chases all the delicious humans around before pulling the Jolly Roger down to the depths. Hook screams that he doesn’t want to be a good captain if it means going down with his ship and oh my god you are not Hook that’s bad form! Luckily, he lands in a longboat with the rest of the crew, and the octopus chases them all into the sunset imagining them all as a boat full of codfish.

The kids celebrate another victory, and even Jane joins in spitting on her hand to shake with the boys. And it’s still gross. Peter totally kills the moment by pointing out she can go home now that she can fly. As the Lost Boys sniffle about how much they’ll miss her, Jane explains that her family needs her. She looks on the bright side, though, because she has lots of new stories to tell Danny. Peter offers to escort her without throwing a fit like he did with Wendy. The whole crew flies through the clouds, no weird trippy wormhole required. I have to make special mention of Nibs using his rabbit ears as a helicopter here. It’s just so bizarre and out of place. We cut back to London, and Jane is curled up on the window seat just like her mother was in the first movie. And it’s implying again that it was all a dream which is just getting extremely annoying. She runs to embrace her mother, gushing about the adventure she just had being kidnapped and almost watching two friends die. She even has the decency to apologize for being a brat. Danny pads out into the hall after having a nightmare, and it’s Jane that comes to his rescue with more stories about defeating Captain Hook.

Wendy smile and listens to her daughter’s change of heart… until she hears a familiar tinkling sound. Outside the window, Peter is creeping on the family, gazing confused at the grown-up Wendy. He’s not even upset about it.  Tink urges him to go to her because apparently the last movie just doesn’t matter and she’s 100% cool with him being friends with her. In fact, she lands right in her hand with no problem and spreads pixie dust on her to make her, a grown-up, fly a few feet. Consistency is hard. Peter bows to her, she curtsies to him, and the two friends say their goodbyes. Jane and Danny run to the window to see him, and Danny is completely awed at seeing that his hero is real after all. But something even better happens not long after that: a truck pulls up to the house. Wendy’s husband is back safe and sound! The war is over… hours after the bombing of London. Somebody on the writing staff failed history. The family embraces and Peter smiles, again, not upset at all that his best friend slash implied crush maybe sorta kinda who promised never to grow up married somebody else. And he and Tink take off back to the second star to the right.

Return to Neverland touches on some really deep topics, like war and loss of faith.  There’s a really good story here, just trying to come out.  The problem is, it’s bogged down by a lot of childish slapstick and silly gags that make it feel like it’s trying to be a Saturday morning cartoon.  It makes the movie feel divided and uneven, never really committing to one thing.  Whenever a really emotional moment happens, there’s a ridiculous pratfall or out of place one-liner right behind.  Walt always said that for every laugh, there should be a tear to balance it out, but I feel like this movie took that principle, reversed it, and exaggerated it beyond recognition.  And that, in turn, just makes everything fall flat.

CHARACTERS

Everyone is also wildly out of character compared to both the first movie and the original source material.  It’s like the writers just went with the personalities the characters are merchandised with.  All the negative traits that made the characters so annoying in the original Peter Pan are toned down or gone entirely.  Considering how much I loathe everyone in the first one, that should be a good thing.  But that’s a big issue with the Disneytoon sequels: they don’t bother to treat the first movie with any kind of respect.

Peter Pan is the biggest example of this.  There are traces of his old cockiness and arrogance, especially in that stupid “all girls get like that around me” line, and he still definitely irritates me to no end.  But mostly, he’s just gotten to be a pretty bland, generic hero type.  He’s always up for fun and adventure and can hold his own with a sword but… that’s it.  That’s all there is to him.  He’s not even interested in stories or full of vitriol towards adults.  He’s just there to remind Jane what happiness is.

Tinker Bell is her usual jealous self at first, but that’s extremely dialed back after the first flight scene.  Once she comes back from her near-death experience, she’s a changed pixie.  She literally becomes the merchandised version of Tinker Bell, all cute and nice and mascot-y.  She’s not even sassy anymore.  She’s just… cute.

Jane is our real main character, and I should probably have put her first but I had a point to make.  She exemplifies Disneytoon’s tradition of taking her famous parental figure’s character arc and reversing it.  Just like Melody is a human who wants to be a mermaid and Scamp is a house dog who wants to be a street dog, Jane grew up too fast and had to rediscover her childhood.  Unlike the first two examples, though, Jane actually did this pretty well, because there was a reason for her to be the way she was.  She’s serious and practical because World War II doesn’t leave much room for frivolity and she takes her promise to look after her family really seriously.  As sequel children go, she’s easily one of the better developed and less annoying ones.

Hook switches even more wildly between being a credible villain and an absolute joke.  I mean, it’s weird.  He has moments of competence that rival the likes of Scar or Ursula, but then there are moments that look like something out of the Three Stooges.  For example, the part where he tricks Jane has him put psychology to some pretty impressive use to rope her into his plans… and then he whips out a photo of his mother.  He exemplifies this movie’s inability to choose a direction and stick with it.  And  “I don’t want to be a good captain” is even worse than “blast good form!” as far as flying in the face of the book characterization.

ARTISTRY

True to form, the look of this movie varies wildly.  The scenes of the devastated London are hauntingly beautiful, and the sight of the little corner house surrounded by rubble tugged at even my heartstrings.  And then we get to Neverland.  Sometimes it looks like they tried to replicate Mary Blair’s distinctive style and missed by thaaaat much. Others, there’s a solid color background and that’s it.  All of it’s done in this bright, saturated, blocky style that looks like something off a 90’s cartoon. I know it’s 2002 so that kind of makes sense, but Lilo and Stitch came out the same year with a pretty limited budget and that movie is gorgeous.  It is one of the more pleasant Disneytoon ventures to look at, but frankly, that’s not saying a whole lot.

MUSIC

This is a Disneytoon sequel from the early 2000’s, so it falls into the same trap most of them do, in that it relies heavily on non-diagetic pop-country ballads.  This time, though, they aren’t completely terrible.  The score’s not particularly memorable, lacking the leitmotifs and catchiness that makes people remember the first one.

The Second Star To the Right is a cover of the credits song from the original, performed by Jonatha Brook who I have never heard of outside this movie.  Her voice is nasally and way over the top, especially compared to the Generic Disney Chorus I’m used to.   It’s kind of painful, actually.  So, we’re not off to a good start.  So why did I praise this movie’s pop-country ballads?

I Try is probably going to make the universe implode on itself.  It’s actually… gasp… good.  Like, really good.  It’s a song from a Disneytoon sequel to Peter flipping Pan that I actually really, really like.  Okay, granted, my memories of this one come from a Disney’s Greatest album I had as a kid more than the actual movie so that probably has something to do with it.  But I really, really, genuinely love this song.  Brook’s vocals are much stronger here than in her previous song, with strong emotions that perfectly illustrated Jane’s conflict between her young age and her horrible situation.  The second verse, which isn’t actually in the movie, legitimately makes me tear up every time I listen to it.  It’s a sad song with a happy ending that beautifully encompasses the hope and faith Disney has always inspired in me in the worst of times.

Here We Go Another Plan is a little ditty where Smee and Hook plot… another plan.  It’s pretty funny hearing Smee throw shade on Hook’s complete incompetence, and Jeff Bennett does a solid impression of Bill Thompson.  It’s just so short there’s not much to say about it.

So To Be One of Us is… ugh.  I’ll Try was a beautiful song that did everything right, so naturally Return to Neverland has to continue being incredibly erratic and throw in something horrendous.  And this is that song.  The Lost Boy’s cutesy kid voices are more annoying than ever, and the chorus is so rushed and wordy that the last phrase doesn’t even feel complete.  It’s all about the joys of being absolutely disgusting because lol boys right?  And I’m not here for that.  For some reason, it gets a reprise and it’s not any better.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Objectively speaking, Return to Neverland is a solidly all right sequel. It’s not as good as Lion King 2, but it’s not as bad as Belle’s Magical World. It’s just… average. Very average. It doesn’t even inspire me with the seething hatred I have for the original Peter Pan. It’s just meh. And that averageness is really infuriating because there are small glimmers of something really good visible under all of it. The scenes that really focus on Jane’s anguish over living in a war zone when deep down she wants to be a normal kid are great! But then you have anything with the octopus, or the gags with the Lost Boys and it’s just like… eugh.

The characterizations in this are also truly awful. In the original, everyone but Wendy was morally pretty dark gray at best, and while they were all terrible and annoying and I hate them, seeing Disney paste their faces on generic archetypes is not good either. Last time around I vented about how what modern Disney thinks of Peter Pan and Tinker Bell is wildly different from the actual characters. This is modern Disney’s interpretation. It’s not inspired by the book, though Jane’s existence and the whole Tink dying thing imply they have some familiarity with it. But neither is it in any way close to the original movie. The main part of why Disney sequels are so reviled is that so many of them miss the point of their predecessors. As much as I dislike the original Peter Pan, I’m not going to forgive the sequel for that either.

Favorite scene: Jane’s fight with Danny, leading into I’ll Try.  I.  Love.  That.  Song.

Final rating: 4/10.  If ever a sequel was going to be rated higher than its original, it was going to be this one.  It’s a jumbled mess of a movie, but it doesn’t make me want to punch things and there’s some real emotion buried deep under all the slapstick.

I only just got back from my brief hiatus where I was playing catch up, but real life is about to take me away from my computer for a bit.  It’s good real life, family I haven’t seen in a while, but it is going to delay the next review for about a week and a half.  See you then!