Return To Never Land
Return to Never Land (also known as Peter Pan in: Return to Never Land and later retitled Peter Pan II: Return to Never Land on current home video release) is a 2002 American animated adventure fantasy film produced by Disney MovieToons and Walt Disney Television Animation. A sequel to Walt Disney Feature Animation's 1953 film Peter Pan (in turn based on J. M. Barrie's 1904 stage play Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up), the film follows Wendy's daughter who refuses to believe in her mother's story during the Blitz in London, only to be mistakenly brought to Neverland by the pirates. In order for her to get home, she meets Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys who encourage her to fly and make her believe. The film stars the voices of Harriet Owen, Blayne Weaver, Corey Burton, Jeff Bennett, Kath Soucie, Spencer Breslin, and Bradley Pierce.
Return to Never Land
Many decades after the events of the first film, Wendy Darling is now grown up, married to a man named Edward, and has two children, Jane and Danny. With World War II raging, Edward leaves his family to fight, leaving Wendy to take care of the children. Jane becomes a very serious girl and, unlike her younger brother, refuses to believe in stories about Peter Pan and Neverland, referring to them as "poppycock". This ultimately leads to a furious argument with her mother and brother.
One evening, Wendy tells Jane and Danny that all the children in London will soon be evacuated to the countryside for their safety due to Nazi Germany's bombing of the city by the Luftwaffe. Later that evening, Peter's arch-nemesis, Captain Hook, and his pirate crew arrive on his pixie-dust enchanted ship and kidnaps Jane, mistaking her for Wendy, and takes her to Neverland, where they plan to feed Jane to an octopus in order to lure Peter into a trap. However, Peter rescues Jane, and Hook escapes from the disgruntled octopus, returning to the ship. After Peter learns that Jane is Wendy's daughter, he takes her to his hideout to be the mother of the Lost Boys as Wendy once was, but Jane refuses. The following day, as the boys fail to teach Jane about flying, she angrily snaps at them and proclaims her disbelief in fairies, causing Tinker Bell to not fly and her light starts to fade. This gives Hook an idea to lure Jane to him, and then kidnap Peter.
Horrified, Jane runs back to the hideout to find Tinker Bell's body. Jane is devastated, thinking the fairy is dead forever, but with Jane's new belief, Tinker Bell is revived. They head to the ship and see Hook forcing Peter to walk the plank. With Tinker Bell's help, Jane learns to fly. As Peter uses the anchor to sink the ship, the pirates, riding on a rowboat, are pursued by the octopus. After saying goodbye to the boys, Peter escorts Jane back home, where she reconciles with Wendy and Danny. Peter and Tinker Bell meet with Wendy again, then fly back to Neverland as Edward returns home and reunites with his family.
Parents need to know that while this movie is rated G, there is some peril, much comic but some a little scary. Children may want to know more about the Blitz (the movie never tells us who it is that is dropping bombs on London, we briefly see children being sent away from their families by train, and we can't tell from the end if the war is over or not).
During all of those years Hook has continued to search for his lost treasure, which was, he believes, stolen by Peter and hidden somewhere on the island. As the film opens, Jane indulges her mother's stories about fairies that can fly. She doesn't believe them, but is persuaded when kidnapped by Hook and his men--who fly in their pirate ship over London, luckily without engaging any anti-aircraft batteries.
This is so god damn irritating and I don't know why. There has never been a space in Neverland? Why put a space in there? Nothing else has put a space in Neverland so why does this movie do that? And it's not like this is just the Letterboxd title, the actual title of the movie has a space in Neverland for some fucking reason. This is a three word title that they decided to stretch out to four.
Peter Pan returns with a new generation of animators. In this direct-to-video sequel, Wendy's daughter Jane (Harriet Owen) is forced to consider the reality of her mother's bedtime stories when she is kidnapped by a revenge seeking Captain Hook (Corey Burton).
As a child I loved the adventures of Peter Pan; the pirates, the mermaids, the belief that I could fly (if I only had some pixie dust). Now Peter Pan has returned with a new generation of animators and geared to a whole new audience.
The movie takes place mainly during World War II, after the now-grown-up Wendy has married and become the mother of two children, Jane and Danny. Jane refuses to believe her mother's stories about Peter Pan and Never Land, choosing to instead focus on surviving the Luftwaffe's nightly bombing raids, but gets kidnapped by Captain Hook one night after being mistaken for her mother. After Peter Pan saves her, he tries to help her return to London from Never Land, by teaching her how to fly. When Jane's difficulty in believing in magic and fairies keeps her grounded - and also causes Tinker Bell's light to start to fade - Peter and the Lost Boys try to help Jane realize the power of "faith, trust, and pixie dust" by training her to become the first "Lost Girl". However, Captain Hook also ropes her into his schemes to capture Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, and claim some treasure.
Return to Never Land (or Peter Pan in Disney's Return to Never Land) is a 2002 animation film sequel to the 1953 film produced by the Walt Disney Television Animation in Sydney, Australia and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. The original "Return to Neverland" VHS & DVD was released on August 20, 2002. It included digitally animated sequences and an all-new voice cast. Return to Never Land was re-released on a Pixie-Powered Edition DVD on November 27, 2007.
Now that she can fly, Jane is able to return home to Wendy and Danny; Peter and Tinker Bell escort her. Peter and Wendy are briefly reunited, and he is displeased that she has grown up, but she assures him that she hasn't really changed; Tinker Bell, having gotten over her jealousy of Wendy, covers her in pixie dust, allowing her to fly one last time; Wendy's proven her point to Peter. He says goodbye and flies off, with Wendy, Jane, Danny and Nana II watching. Edward returns from the army, Hitler's plans to invade Britain were thwarted by the Royal Air Force (coupled with massive losses in Stalingrad against the Soviet Armed Forces), the family is reunited, and the family watches as Peter Pan and Tinker Bell quietly fly home.
Return to Never Land was released on VHS and DVD August 20, 2002, and it took in only lukewarm sales. This version of the film went out of print on January 31, 2003. On November 27, 2007, Return to Never Land was released in a "Pixie-Powered Edition"; the movie was also released in a Peter Pan Trilogy, along with the Peter Pan Platinum Edition, and Tinker Bell, on December 18, 2008. The Pixie-Powered Edition returned to the Disney Vault along with Peter Pan on January 31, 2009. It was re-released on Disney Blu-ray August 20, 2013. It was reprinted on Blu-ray in June 2018 as a Disney Movie Club Exclusive. Return to Never Land was included on The Walt Disney Company's streaming service Disney+ on November 12, 2019.
By Aaron WallaceThe Disney sequel has long been associated with a direct-to-video release; mention one and you'll conjure thoughts of the other. Starting with The Return of Jafar in 1994, Buena Vista Home Entertainment has issued an unending slew of sequels to the chagrin of some fans and the appeasement of an apparently eager public. When work began on Return to Never Land, an animated sequel to Walt Disney's 1953 Peter Pan, the project was intended to be the studio's latest home video debut. Somewhere along the way, though, the movie was upgraded to a theatrical release and in 2002, it became the first proper sequel to a Disney animated classic that DisneyToon Studios released to theaters nationwide. If nothing else, Return to Never Land is evidence that a theatrical release does not guarantee superiority. In the sizable pool of Disney sequels -- just about all of which have gone straight to video -- the Peter Pan follow-up sits squarely in the middle. Efforts such as Lady and the Tramp II and the recent Cinderella III easily surpass it. Never Land isn't merely a retread of its source material, however, and that is an attribute that makes it stand out from less ambitious follow-ups.The movie is set in the midst of World War II, as the children of London are evacuated to the English countryside to spare them the risk of bombing. Now grown up and married, Wendy struggles to break the news to her children, Jane and Danny, who are holding out hope that their father returns from combat unharmed. Wendy regales the younger Danny with stories of her own adventures in Never Land while the more hardened Jane scoffs at their incredulity. She's made a believer soon enough, though, when Captain Hook breaks into the Darling home (Wendy has apparently inherited it) and kidnaps Jane in the mistaken belief that she is Wendy herself. Whisked away to Never Land, Jane is just the bait Hook needs to prompt another showdown with the one and only Peter Pan. The whole thing plays out a little too closely along the lines of Hook (Steven Spielberg's wonderful 1991 film) but while the similarities are noticeable, it's far from a blatant rip-off. Naturally, Hook is the better Pan sequel, but comparing a DisneyToon production to a big budget blockbuster isn't really fair. The World War II setting is an unexpected one, lending a welcome, albeit slight, edge to the proceedings. When the many bland contexts in which this second Pan story could have been told are considered, the direction chosen suggests some inspiration. The setting is even more effective as a tool for lending greater weight to the emotional center of the story, which gives Jane far more attention than Wendy ever had in the original. Though neither original nor overwhelming, Jane's central journey towards faith is easy enough to invest in for an hour or so. The character is made more accessible to the audience when her sympathetic childhood is relayed early on. The magic of Never Land is, as in in the original, made relevant by its direct impact on a family in the real world and the film never loses sight of that. Aside from the story, three aspects of Return to Never Land are particularly worth discussing: animation, voice acting, and music. The first of these marks the most significant gap in quality from the original film. The animators at the now-folded DisneyToon Studios have improved considerably over the years, with each feature seemingly surpassing the previous in terms of animation. By 2002, things were looking pretty good and indeed, Never Land's art is solid. Nevertheless, the flattened backgrounds, occasionally off-model characters, and inconsistent fluidity that mark television animation are all present here. As a result, the movie feels cinematic at times and downright cartoonish at others but of course the dazzling 1950s animation is never even challenged, let alone rivaled. Amazon.com Widgets The movie employs quite a bit of CGI, creating visuals that looked more impressive five years ago when CGI was newer and all the rage than they do today. I suspect the computer graphics might have been partly responsible for the movie's trip to theaters, a hunch that the trailer supports. The flashy digital imagery is thankfully relegated to appropriate things like Hook's ship, however, and largely left out of the characters, who still look like they were actually drawn (though with modern sensibilities).Forty-nine years after Peter Pan, a reunion of the original voice cast is out of question. Disney resultantly turned to their stable of voice actors to match the originals as best they could. Corey Burton is astoundingly good as Captain Hook, capturing Hans Conreid's performance with amazing accuracy. Tinker Bell's voice is pretty faithfully recreated too, though that didn't require much work. The rest of the transitions aren't as smooth. Blayne Weaver is instantly distinguishable from Bobby Driscoll but comes close enough to overlook the discrepancy. The same cannot be said for Harriet Owen, who does a fine job as Jane but comes nowhere close to imitating Kathryn Beaumont when she briefly attempts to voice young Wendy at the movie's opening. And speaking of bad vocal performances, let's not overlook Jonatha Brooke, who wrote an excellent anthem for the movie in "I Try" but renders it impotent when she sings it herself. She does a better job with a new take on "Second Star to the Right" but, like most of the movie's music, it's pretty forgettable. While not a straight musical, characters do occasionally break into song while a nondiegetic soundtrack is favored at other times. The score is rather bland and Saturday morning cartoonish, matching the sometimes tiring visual gag sequences. A notable exception is the opening overture, which effectively puts one in a Peter Pan mood. More than just diverting but ultimately unremarkable, Return to Never Land is likely to be appreciated by children and Disney fans but isn't destined to endure as anyone's favorite. The movie was first released to DVD in 2002 but remained in print for only a matter of months. Long unavailable, it returns to DVD this week as a new Pixie-Powered Edition, perhaps the silliest title ever bestowed upon a home video release. The new edition isn't particularly thrilling, I'm afraid; for more on that, read on. 041b061a72