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American history is typically left to text books and dry documentaries. But leave it to Disney to take a rather unsavory part of our country’s history and turn it into a charming—though entirely fictional—fairy tale.
Disney’s Pocahontas tells the New World love story of Captain John Smith (voiced by Mel Gibson) and Native American princess Pocahontas (Irene Bedard).
When Governor Ratcliffe (David Ogden Stiers) sets sail on the Virginia Trading Company’s voyage to mine gold in the New World, he brings Smith along to help battle the local savages. Smith has defeated the natives time and time again, and Ratcliffe expects the same on this journey. He definitely doesn’t expect him to fall in love with the local chief’s daughter.
Pocahontas is a free-spirited princess who’s expected to marry her village’s best warrior. It’s the smart choice, but Pocahontas wants more: more adventure, more excitement, more romance. When the foreign ships arrive, they bring plenty of romance and excitement—but they also bring danger for her people.
As Pocahontas and John Smith fall in love, trouble is building between the natives and the English workers—and the two set out to stop it.
Widely criticized for its historical inaccuracies, Pocahontas definitely isn’t the kind of movie that you can watch instead of studying for a big American history test. After all, the romance between Pocahontas and John Smith is nothing more than the thing of legends. But while the argument can be made that filling a kids’ film with so many historical inaccuracies could give kids a false perception of history, the argument can also be made that letting kids watch movies about mermaids and fairy godmothers and talking animals could give kids a false perception of reality.
Still, the relationship between the Native Americans and the English settlers doesn’t exactly make the ideal backdrop for a love story. The grizzlier aspects of the story may have been sanitized, but that doesn’t mean that it’s been turned into a fluffy musical fairy tale about friendship and brotherly love. Instead, the romance is set in the midst of war and death, making Pocahontas much more subdued and serious than the average Disney movie. Though it has a few lightly humorous moments, thanks to Pocahontas’s sidekicks, Meeko the raccoon and Flit the hummingbird, this isn’t really a playful kids’ film.
Pocahontas is certainly a gorgeous animated film, with beautifully animated natural settings to help soften some of the hardness of the story. And if you’re able to overlook the historical inaccuracies and enjoy it as just another Disney fairy tale, it’s actually a sweet, Romeo and Juliet kind of love story. It definitely isn’t one of Disney’s most magical tales, but the art and romance still make it worth watching.
Blu-ray Review:
The three-disc, two-movie Blu-ray release of Pocahontas also features both Blu-ray and DVD versions of the film’s 1998 straight-to-video sequel, Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, along with plenty of extras.
Music definitely takes center stage on the special features menu, which includes a deleted song, “If I Never Knew You,” as well as The Music of Pocahontas, a short feature on the film’s Oscar-winning song-writing duo, Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. Many of the nine deleted scenes included on the disc also feature more deleted music.
For more background information on the project, meanwhile, you’ll want to check out the fascinating feature, Drawing Inspiration: The Lost Story of Hiawatha, which shows sketches and storyboards from Hiawatha, a shelved project that Disney was developing in the ‘40s—a film that ended up inspiring the artistic style of Pocahontas. And, for another one of Disney’s Native American adventures, you can watch the cute Silly Symphonies short Little Hiawatha.
As is often the case with Disney’s special edition releases, the Pocahontas Blu-ray has extras for everyone: a silly short film for kids, songs for music lovers, and plenty of behind-the-scenes stuff for Disney history buffs. I recommend giving Drawing Inspiration a look—but, whatever your interests, you’ll find something on this disc that’s worth watching.
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