Movie Thoughts: Pocahontas (1995)

• Released: 23 June 1995
• Directed by: Mike Gabriel, Eric Goldberg
• Running time: 1 h 21 min
• Rating 1/5

Synopsis

A blooming romance between a Native American woman and a white man must prevent a war between their respective peoples. 

My Thoughts

Okay, who on Earth thought this was a good idea? To adapt the really tragic tale of a real-life Native American girl (note that the real Pocahontas was a kid while this took place) who was forcibly converted and had all kinds of other horrible things happen to her. Yeah, that makes for a nice family-friendly Disney movie.

Just the fact that while this and The Lion King were being made, people thought that this was going to be the big deal once it'd come out is just baffling to me. This is a lesser movie in every single way. Revisionist history, lesser visuals, lesser music, a godawful main villain, too many sidekicks, boring and bland main characters... Seriously, how is this in any way supposed to be superior to Lion King?

I really don't want to go very in depth here because Pocahontas has been talked to death about by so many people. We all know what's wrong with it and that it's just not good. At all. Heck, it actually took me several times of pausing the movie just to get through it. Even the problematic stuff aside, it's just such a boring slog to get through.

The idea that this movie thought it was remotely okay to portray the conflict between the Powhatan tribe and the colonists as having both parties being at fault is just...yikes. Who do you think is in the right here, the colonists trying to wipe out the natives and steal their land or the people simply defending themselves and their home? But nope, they're both wrong as portrayed in the song "Savages", which has fantastic lyrics such as "they're not like you and me, which means they must be evil". Wow. 

There's also the complete bullshit of breaking the language barrier. Even if I had to sit through this movie, I think it would've been interesting if we could've seen Pocahontas and Smith work on breaking their barriers together. Slowly learning more from one another, which would actually make their bond feel, you know, genuine. But nope, magic bullshit saves the day and allows them to communicate. 

I'm also not a big fan of the visual style here. It's all very angular and there's quite a few weird expressions in there (especially from Smith when shown from the front. That just doesn't look right). Pocahontas and her female friend also don't seem to have noses or nose bridges, which is quite distracting since other characters are drawn with them very prominently. It just makes them look like they have nostrils and nothing else. 

Is there nothing decent about this movie? Nah, I wouldn't say that. But it's all very, very minimal. While obviously lesser-looking than The Lion King, it does have some decent visuals and good animation. Again, not a big fan of the expressions on Smith and some of the more angular designs, but overall I'd say it is good-looking. Also, while I didn't care for a single other musical number in the entire movie, I do think that "Colors of the Wind" was beautiful and also had a pretty good-looking sequence to go along with it. Another thing I kind of weirdly appreciate is the fact that the two romantic leads don't end up staying together. Yes, they're forced to, but damn, in almost all Disney movies they end up together in some way. So it was at least different to see them do something like this.

That said, this doesn't in any way salvage the movie. It's still shit and very yikes. Not recommended. I think it's safe to say this is the worst of the Renaissance era.