Father Geek here with "our own" Chicago Film Critic (the one with a Baseball Bat and a Tommygun), not the one with the TV show owned by Disney Corp, and his first report of 2002. For those of you who thought he really ripped them up on Valentine's Day a few years back, well, prepare yourself because he cuts them to pieces this time... he gut shoots the whole concept... shows NO MERCY!

Don't expose the kids to this one!

Now, here's big Al himself...

Spoiler Warning!!!

(yeah... like that's possible with this foul smelling pile of excrement)

Hey, Capone in Chicago here with my first review of 2002. Last year at this time I predicted that one of the first film’s I saw in 2001, ANTITRUST would be the worst film of the year, and I think that still may be the case. I’m extremely tardy in issuing forth my best of 2001 list, but I’m seeing BLACK HAWK DOWN tonight and MONSTER’S BALL next week, so I should be able to slap some shit together right after that. But I digress…I realize we’re only three weeks into 2002, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that I’ve seen the worst film of 2002... It’s name: RETURN TO NEVER LAND.

I’ve been reading with much enthusiasm the numerous reports on this site regarding the Sundance Film Festival. I read about young film makers who have yet to have their innocent hearts blackened by studio money and influence. I’m following with extreme interest the path of fellow Chicagoan Pete Jones, the winner of the “Project Greenlight” contest, and pray he has not become discouraged as a result of the slash and burn way STOLEN SUMMER was produced. I’m also interested in the films playing at Sundance because some of them may show up when I attend (wait for it) Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper’s Film Festival at Sea in about a month and a half aboard a Disney cruise line. Gulp!!And its with Disney that I am currently sickened by.

It was my understanding (and someone correct me if I’m wrong) that Walt Disney (the man and the company) made it very clear that he/it would not release a sequel to any of his/its animated features in theatres (although that hasn’t stopped them from crowding the children’s section of video stores with plenty of straight-to-video sequels to most of their more recent animated films). So to me, RETURN TO NEVER LAND is something of a betrayal. I exclude FANTASIA 2000 from my sense of disgust because FANTASIA was always meant to be a constantly changing and re-released work. But...

RETURN TO NEVER LAND is just plain wrong...

At just over an hour in length, it does officially mark Disney’s first animated sequel released in theatres. Oh the humanity.In case haven’t figured it out from the title, RETURN TO NEVER LAND is a follow-up to Disney’s 1953 PETER PAN, which shockingly enough is being released on DVD three days before NEVER LAND hits theatres. Coincidence? Puh-leeze!!!

It’s several years after the story of PETER PAN took place, during the worst of the bombing raids on London during WWII. Wendy Darling has grown to be a woman, marry, and have two children of her own, one of which is Jane, a girl now about the same age Wendy was when she met Peter Pan for the first time. Wendy has raised her children on stories of her adventures with her brothers, Peter, the Lost Boys, Tinkerbell, and Captain Hook. But Jane has grown tired of these stories, and is trying to convince her younger brother that Peter Pan doesn’t exist. Wendy’s husband is off to war, and the whole family is afraid they’ll never see him again.One night, Capt. Hook and his crew show up in London and kidnap Jane (thinking she’s Wendy) as bait to lure Peter out of his hiding place. Apparently, it’s taken Hook 15-plus years to come up with this ingenious plan. Peter does eventually rescue her, and Jane is introduced to all of the major players from the original film. There’s one more encounter with Hook, and Jane goes home. End of story. Sorry to ruin it for you!

Oh come on, people. There isn’t a second that goes by here where you don’t know exactly what’s coming up and how everything will end. Once again, Tinkerbell’s life is put in danger because someone doesn’t believe in fairies; the Lost Boys do little more than trip over each other and make funny faces; Peter flies around and smiles; and our favorite ticking crocodile is replaced by a “sucking” octopus. There aren’t even any cool celebrity voices to distract you from the vapid story. This is a cheap-looking, knock-off produced for no other reason than to increase video sales, and every kid in the packed theatre where I saw this was bored out of their collective skulls.

Every “life-threatening” situation that Peter gets in avoid any sense of even surface drama or tension. I realize that the jokes here are intended for children, but every one falls flat. This sort of tripe should be banished to Saturday morning network cartoon marathons, and save the big screens for the animation that took more than five minutes to draw. This shit looks like those little flip drawings I used to do in the corners of my notebooks in high school. Then they insult us by throwing in a few computer-generated elements (mainly Capt. Hook’s ship) to make everything look modern and funky fresh dope for the older kids.

If there was ever a film that didn’t need to be made (other than the PSYCHO remake), this is it.

Disney should be ashamed.

Capone