Keeping with Disney’s latest attempt to sequel off all of their well-known titles, rather than taking the risk of coming up with new ones, the studio has released their sequel to the 1953 animated picture Peter Pan.
         Return to Never Land, directed by Donovan Cook and Robin Budd, is surprisingly not a bad follow-up though, and well outdoes some of its cheesy Disney sequel counterparts, like The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea and The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride. Comparatively, though, it falls as nothing close to the 1991 Steven Spielberg live-action sequel, Hook, and seems like little more than a marketing ploy to sell more copies of the recently released “Special Edition” DVD of the original.
         The story begins with an adult Wendy’s family living in England during World War II. When her husband is sent to fight in the war, Wendy’s daughter, Jane (Harriet Owen), finds herself faced with the responsibilities of watching over the family and the need to grow up.
         However, when she is mistakenly kidnapped by Captain Hook (Corey Burton of Atlantis: The Lost Empire), who assumes her to be Wendy, she is taken away to Never Land, where it will be up to Peter Pan to make the rescue and show her that growing old does not always have to mean growing up.
         One factor the film has in its favor is the run-time. At 64 minutes (10 minutes less than the original), the movie is to the point and holds the attention span of its most lucrative audience—children—without wasting time in unnecessary plot twists. However, this inevitably leaves many of the subplots of the film, like Jane’s sudden befriending of Pan, brief and without development.
         The blend of hand-drawn animation with CGI technology is seamless and, with few exceptions, nearly impossible to differentiate. One scene in particular, where Hook’s pirate ship soars through the city of London, dodging bridges and buildings, was a very impressive mix and looked like a moving-chair amusement park ride in the making.
         The film is fun and entertaining but is, at times, plagued by its music. Although the end credits list at least five songs, throughout the movie it seems as if the same two are played over and over again, giving an annoying, repetitive nature to the score and, ultimately, the movie.
         Another disappointing aspect was the replacement of the crocodile that bit off Hook’s hand with a giant octopus. The octopus, after devouring Hook’s pants early in the film, becomes the sea captain’s new worst nightmare, and the croc, who never makes so much as an appearance, is all but forgotten.
         While, overall, Return to Never Land is a respectable follow-up, older audiences will clearly see that the magic Disney uses to envelop its viewers is not cast into its sequels. It is because of this that the better viewing choice to complete the Pan story remains Spielberg’s Hook.
         With continuations to Cinderella and The Hunchback of Notre Dame due out later this year, it may just be the perfect time for the mouse to realize that “and they all lived happily ever after” means that the story is over and it’s time to move on.