TINKER BELL (2008)
Featuring the voices of Mae Whitman, Kristin Chenoweth, Raven-Symone, Lucy Liu, America Ferrera, Jane Horrocks, Jesse McCartney, Jeff Bennett, Rob Paulsen, Pamela Adlon, Anjelica Huston, Kathy Najimy and Loreena McKennitt.
Screenplay by Jeffrey M. Howard.
Directed by Bradley Raymond.
Distributed by Walt Disney Home Video. 78 minutes. Rated G.
Disney has gone back to the well and revived almost all of its franchises for video, so it is no huge surprise to see the most famous fairy in the world get her own adventure (and apparently this is just the first of a series of Tink videos.)
Lucky, a decent amount of thought and imagination was put into this straight-to-video release. It is not just a rewrite of earlier adventures. In this film, we learn more about the little sprite.
Tinker Bell is actually something of a prequel to Peter Pan – there is no sign of Peter and the lost boys who will become such a major part of her life, and Wendy only appears as a small child in a cameo at the end.
Instead Tinker Bell explores where the fairy comes from, showing her early years at Pixie Hollow as one of the many fairies who works together to create spring. She is smart and inquisitive, but most of her ideas fail, until she finally essentially turns the creation of spring into an assembly-line process.
Still, her pluck and her interaction with the other fairies is imaginative and well-thought out. At first it is a little jarring to hear Tinker Bell speak – in Peter Pan she was always heard as a bell jingling, but quickly you get used to it and she becomes a more complicated, full-fledged character than she was in previous films.
It is also a little odd to see all these characters in computer animation rather than traditional pen and ink. This is sort of a mixed blessing – the backgrounds and lots of the specific details of Pixie Hollow are absolutely gorgeous, but the actual characters don't always have that feel of realism – though, in fairness, this film captures humanoid creatures a lot better than most computer graphics do.
Tinker Bell is not one of those children's movies that adults (who don't have kids) will look out for in a video store, nor is it likely to be more than a pleasant little diversion to the ones who do actually watch it. Kids, however – particularly little girls - will eat this stuff up.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2008 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 27, 2008.
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