Disney is known for its Renaissance period, that being with every large pouring out of good films over a good portion of time, the next step following with a lesser pile of movies is consider the next Renaissance until it picked up later on down the road. Arguably Disney’s most famous Renaissance was between 1989 – 1995 with such classic movies like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King all coming out in the time period, earning the company massive critical and fan success and bucket loads of money, showing off that kids hand drawn entertainment was popular money-maker. Then Pocahontas happened in 1995 and not only started the decline of Disney for a long period of time, but also possibly destroyed hand-drawn animated movies in the mainstream as we know it. In the time when the England empire hoped to take over every unclaimed land in the world, the British fleet lands on Native American soil, claiming it as their own and disrupting the tribe that lives there. The tribe’s princess, Pocahontas (voiced by Irene Bedard) ventures to close and comes across John Smith (voiced by Mel Gibson), a man known for killing ‘’Savages’’ yet is nice enough to not do it this time because he finds her pretty. Together they start to respect and understand each other, but the tension between the two sides are starting to over boil, all being planned out by a greedy governor named Radcliffe (voiced by David Ogden Stiers). While this movie wasn’t a critical or box office failure, it was definitely a film that wasn’t overly gushed about as much as Disney recent previous with even kids finding this fictionalised story of the real life native American princess dull and uninteresting. While not an overall terrible movie as there would be far worse ones later one that are more likely the cause of Disney’s downgrade, but this one was unfortunately the starting point.

For a Disney animated movie (let alone one based around a Princess formula), the company did at least have enough guts to do something completely out of their comfort zone. While staying close to making films about classic fairy tales and moral lessons, a film based around a real-life historical event was something completely out of left field for them at this time, and its admirable they would go that direction. However, promise in concept does not matter if the handling of said story isn’t executed well, and the movie suffers greatly from being unimaginably boring and predictable. The grossly inaccurate history can be excused as the actual tale is far darker and more twisted so fluffing it up is perfectly fine, but it needs something interesting to be added in by comparison. The story itself tries to be more realistic and less fanatical, but it’s home to one of the most obvious and weightless narrative even for kids cartoons, ‘’two sides don’t like each other, bad guy only wants gold and wants to kill anything different, two people from opposite sides have to band together to stop them’’. It never takes that concept in a new direction and since the film is pretty short in running time, the story feels like an afterthought in its own movie, more focused on making the visual and music pretty instead of what’s holding it together. Even kids would be able to figure out every character’s direction, purpose, and outcome from the first few seconds of screen time. Instead of taking a really fun yet intriguing look at a part of history in a false but informative way for kids, it produced something that anyone could get the same message out of a 10-min baby cartoon.

When the story itself feels like it wasn’t properly planned out to be memorable, that also carries over to your characters as well. Pocahontas, for example, is strong and free-spirited, but as dull as a rock. She does things that the typical Disney princesses wouldn’t do, but she given no other personality traits to make her stand out among all the others, and her distinct lack of motivation and purpose in her own film makes it hard to find any reasons that she should be remembered as strongly. While the voice acting for her is fine enough and the person behind her singing voice, Judy Kuhn, is incredibly good, it doesn’t help this poorly written heroine. The only thing more boring than her is her love interest, John Smith, who seems inconsistently written and even blander than she is. While Gibson is fine as the voice, neither of them having them much chemistry or even time to flesh it out. The villain is pretty terrible, with awfully standard motivation, pretty simple design and a great waste of a pretty good voice actor. While Disney are usually great at their baddies, and to their credit they do show that both sides have good and bad on them, this time they didn’t put in much effort. Most of the sides are just filled with stereotypes and while none are truly awful (outside of a forced other guy who Pocahontas is forced to wed too), they don’t leave that much impact. There are some cute funny moments with the animal comic relief, all gotten across without having them talk either, letting them just be normal animals. While that is a nice change of pace, it seems a bit contradictory when another comic relief is a sentient grandmother talking tree, who is honestly fine but seems a bit off with the film’s tone.

While the story and characters could have used some work, the film figuratively and literally shines in its colors and its music. The animation style for this movie is a bit different compared to the other Disney movies of its time, replacing the prominent lines with more faded ones and replacing the giant Barbie and Ken like eyes with smaller sharper eyes and more defined facial features. While it’s definitely different and isn’t without some good moments, its not as effective or even as comfortable as the usual more connectable expressive eyes that the audience is more used to. The color palette for this movie is amazing; they are so smooth and engrossed with the locations and atmosphere of the film that its hard to even noticeable the line work on any of them, it feels like it just soaks into the film, resulting in some beautiful location shots and some amazing lighting moments. The music is also very memorable in parts; Alan Menken wrote them and as usual, he uses his amazing songwriting talent to make a few good ones. While not all of them are perfect, none are terrible and a few really stand out; Just Around the River Bend has a nice fast pace to it, Colors of the Wind has a nice melody and great vocal behind it, and Savages (despite a few silly lyrics) feels like something out of Les Miserable, it gets incredibly epic in scale. Even the score, also done by Menken, has this size to it that makes the film feel more epic than it actually is.

Pocahontas wasn’t as big or popular as Disney was hoping it to be (actually it was given more focus than The Lion King which Disney saw as the B movie to this one), and while it has its fair share of fans, its pretty clear why. The story of the Native American Princess in real life was a tale of tragedy, here it’s a tale that could be replaced with many others. The movie didn’t need to follow real-life history, but it shouldn’t then have been replaced with narrative and message so predictably standard. It has a great color scheme, some very nice musical numbers and some cute animal sidekick moments, but outside of that, nothing else that’s really of merit. Some might get into the other stuff as nothing about the film is really that offensive or wrong (it changes history about as much as cinema always does anyway). These Colors of the Wind may be a bit misguided, but check the movie out anyway and see if they work enough for you.