Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Pocahontas (1995)
Director: Mike Gabriel, Eric Goldberg
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Disney's Pocahontas can't get stirred dramatically for political correctness, the finale will please nobody, and the songs are duff. That said, there are enough incidental felicities to pass the time pleasantly. A great deal of care went into the depiction of the Native Americans, in particular the gorgeous heroine, but the whites and various pet animals - Meeko the racoon, Flit the hummingbird - come from stock. Given the pompous colonialist views that John Smith has to express, it's just as well they requisitioned the endearingly jivey tones of Gibson for the hero. Pocahontas shows him that the natives live harmoniously in primitive Paradise. He takes her point and they fall in love. The British settlers only want gold, but whether they're all as villainous (Connolly voices one) as mustachioed Gov Ratcliffe and his decadent pug isn't clear. Smith is captured by Pocahontas' father, Chief Powhatan, but she saves his life by offering hers. He then stops a British bullet intended for the Chief. All this self-abnegation carries over into a Casablanca-style ending.Author: BC
Cast & crew
Director: Mike Gabriel, Eric Goldberg
Producer: James Pentecost
Cast: Irene Bedard, Mel Gibson, David Ogden Stiers, Billy Connolly, Christian Bale, Linda Hunt full cast
Duration: 81 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now