Tinker Bell
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.
