Pocahontas (10th Anniversary Edition) (DVD)

There are not many Disney films that have managed to elude my attention over the years but Pocahontas is one of them, until now as Disney has given the film a 10th Anniversary 2-Disc treatment with two versions of the film.

Okay, so I said there are two versions of the film, but really this new version only includes an additional song performed by Mel Gibson with some new animation, and it is a song the movie can do without, which is why it wasn't included in the theatrical version in the first place, but this DVD is worth your attention as it offers up a great movie with a good group of features for the kids and adults.

Pocahontas tells the timeless tale of a young and adventuresome woman as she meets an English settler, John Smith (voiced by Mel Gibson). Her tribe finds these settlers to be dangerous and the settlers are not exactly warming up to the idea of becoming friends with the Native Americans, which ultimately pins Pocahontas and Smith in the middle of a territorial battle between two cultures struggling to get to know one another, if at all.

Pocahontas isn't as engaging as such features as Aladdin, The Lion King or The Little Mermaid but it is a great story and quickly paced, and this set comes packed with special features.

Personally I don't believe you have to be a kid to enjoy a Disney movie, but I do believe you have to be a kid to enjoy several of the special features that Disney includes on their 2-Disc DVDs and Pocahontas is no different as it includes two DVD-games titled "Follow Your Heart" and an Art Project feature along with a group of Sing-Along-Songs, which my friends and I aren't exactly keen on sitting around singing together along with the DVD.

But there are a group of features that adults will certainly be interested in checking out from the making-of featurette, an early presentation reel that shows what the filmmakers used to sell the idea to the upper brass at Disney, some storyboard comparisons, design features, music features, deleted scenes and a multi-language reel, which has become a staple on Disney DVDs and is really cool as it this one features the "Colors of the Wind" segment of the film in several different languages.

I must say my favorite of the bunch were the character design features where they show how they came up with the idea for the way several characters would look and the best of the bunch is where they show how Pocahontas got her look.

The feature has animator Glen Keane, who also was the animator behind Ariel in The Little Mermaid, explaining how he came to create Pocahontas. First he features an extremely unflattering and old picture of one person's idea of what Pocahontas looked like and then he proceeds to go into his vision. Using an overhead projector, he draws Ariel and then on top of that draws Pocahontas and shows the differences. For me, this was by far the best of the bunch and it only runs for a little over four minutes, but he packs a lot of info in that short time span.

The remaining feature I have yet to mention is the audio commentary on the first disc. I don't normally find audio commentaries on animated features to be all that interesting, but there have been exceptions, and this one falls right down the middle as producer James Pentecost and directors Eric Goldberg and Mike Gabriel guide you through the film. My largest objection to these commentaries is normally due to the overwhelmingly long making-of featurettes that usually accompany animated DVDs, but the featurette in this collection only runs for about 28 minutes leaving these boys enough to talk about through the feature that you don't ultimately find yourself suffering from boredom or redundancy.

All-in-all, this is another Disney film worth adding to the collection if animated films are your thing. Pocahontas was one of the last traditionally-animated Disney films that I can actually say that about as the studio has seemed to lose its flare over the past few years, but thanks to DVD it seems like they never lost a step.

To take a peek at three Pocahontas storyboards and two stills of the new animation click the button at the top of the features section to the right.