THE NEVERENDING STORY III
A film review by Tom Pfeifer
Copyright 1994 Tom Pfeifer
Neverending Story III, The -- Escape from Fantasia (Die Unendliche Geschichte III -- Rettung aus Phantasien)
Rating (0 to 10): 7
Date released: Oct 27, 1994 Premiere Oct 23, 1994 Running length approx. 95 min
Starring: Jason James Richter, Melody Kay, Jack Black, Freddie Jones, Julie Cox, Tracey Ellis, Kevin McNulty Director: Peter Macdonald Story: Karin Howard based on *characters* from Michael Ende's novel Book: Jeff Liebermann Producers: Dieter Geissler, Tim Hampton Creatures: Jim Henson's Creature Shop Camera: Robin Vidgeon, BSC Music: Peter Wolf Released by CineVox / Warner Bros.
Making a sequel of a good movie is mostly a hard job, and rarely a successful one. It is even harder in this case, where the plot does not only have to be continued but to be looped into itself as "never-ending."
While the first two movies were strongly based on the novel by Michael Ende, this one is only based "on the characters." The idea is to transfer Phantasia now into the "real" world. It focuses on the problems of Bastian in school and family, his conflicts with a gang of school bullies, the Nasties, and with his new step sister Nicole.
Bastian finds his favorite book of THE NEVERENDING STORY when he hides from the Nasties in the school library. He wishes himself to Phantasia, leaving the book on the floor, where it is found by Slip, the gang leader. The latter recognizes the power of the book and begins to form Phantasia after his bad intentions. When the chaos becomes worse the Childlike Empress requests Bastian to move back to the real world, get the book back and save Phantasia. Accidentally some Phantasien characters travel with him to reality, but get lost in different places. Meanwhile Slip and the other Nasties spread anarchy. Finally, Bastian gets support from Nicole, who begins to believe in the power of Phantasia. Together the are able to solve the situation and become friends.
The plot (Karin Howard) is very flat. Decisions and conclusions in difficult situations are not developed, but instead solved too quickly.
Due to the distance in time between the first movie (1984), the second (1990), and this one, we have to accustom ourselves to the third actor for the hero, Bastian Balthasar Bux, and for other characters too. Jason James Richter (FREE WILLY [1993], FREE WILLY 2 [1995]) delivers a good performance, and so did Melody Kay as his step sister Nicole (stage and TV experience).
The villains, the Nasties, were a bit overdrawn and fall sometimes into the slapstick trend of HOME ALONE. Later I saw a television interview with the director where he confessed that he had exactly this intention--to bring "some of the humour of the HOME ALONE movies" into this one.
The Childlike Empress (Julie Cox) is stiff and not at all convincing, luckily she appears not too often.
The inhabitants of Phantasia are now well known and not surprising anymore. However, we miss some of their favorite habits (Falkor/Fuchur didn't ask to be rubbed behind his ear, for example).
The style of the dialogues of Rockbiter Junior, trying to produce cuteness by being purposely infantile, is simply stupid.
Due to the focus on the "real world" there are less and shorter sequences in Phantasia. In general, this sequel cannot provide the magic of the previous movies.
This impression is amplified by the sound track, which is completely "real world"-like too (Music: Peter Wolf). It is more interested to hit the charts then to support a fairy tale as Klaus Doldinger did 1984 in the first one.
However, the 2000 premiere kids cried and applauded during the showdown, probably because the critical mass of kids was sufficient, and they obviously have had fun.
I saw what was announced as the world premiere in Germany, where the movie was shot in the Babelsberg studios. It was made with mostly American actors, because the American market seems not to honor other and would demand a re-make of the movie for acceptance (the worst example I remember was THREE MEN AND A BABY, which lost a lot of the original French charm in the American re-make).
However, the German market has its own flaws and would not accept the English version--therefore I saw the dubbed German version of this international production, which might have marginally influenced my opinion about the acting.
In general, the movie provides good entertainment, and there are enough funny one-liners for the parents too. Try to forget your expectation from the parts 1 and 2, as this one has a completely different style. Have fun, but don't forget to bring enough kids with you. Part 4 is planned.
On the scale from 0 to 10 I'd like to give a 7.
- Tom Pfeifer (pfeifer@fokus.gmd.de)
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews