Reviews WesternAnimation / Pocahontas

Mediocre movie, great music

Pocahontas, as a whole, is not a very good movie. The plot and characters are pretty generic, and the writing isn't good enough to make up for that. Even ignoring the historical and geographical inaccuracies, I found this movie to be just boring. It's a really cliche plot: guy goes to new world, meets (hot) native, learns their ways and decides said ways are better. The characters are also pretty cliche: guy who just wants to explore new places, girl who wants to do new things and not get married to the guy everyone wants her to. They have to go against a generic villain, but hey, at least he has a motivation other than For The Evil. I know a lot of other Disney movies have characters like that, but in those movies, they're generally fleshed out more. Here, that's about it, there's no further character development. There are also a couple random little things to question, like: How does "listening with your heart" help break language barriers? Why do Pocahontas and John pick up a baby bear while the mother is standing RIGHT THERE? (okay, perhaps I shouldn't question stuff they do in the musical numbers) And the biggest one is in the end, where John is injured and thus "can't stay" in the new world. It makes no sense, seeing as how the boat trip back to Europe would take months, and even initially healthy people had a high chance of dying while on such trips.

I will, however, commend the animation and the music. Being Disney, of course the animation is good. It's quite visually appealing. While the dialogue in the movie is pretty dull, the music and lyrics are great. It's one of the few Disney movies where I like nearly every song in it. (and by "like", I mean I can't help but catch the tune and want to sing along) When I watch this movie, I'm watching it ONLY for the music.