A prophecy is an interesting storytelling tool in a fantasy setting. It is a convenient way to inject exposition quickly and set a ticking time-bomb clock, injecting information as in Alfred Hitchcock’s famous advice on mastering cinematic tension. A prophecy also provides an excellent vehicle to communicate character traits, since the way characters will react to the always-subject-to-interpretation prophecy subtly communicates character traits about them. Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast, the latest direct-to-video movie in the Disney Fairies franchise, exploits its prophecy in both these ways, while maintaining the series’ ability to craft a richly detailed fantasy world populated by winning characters. It manages to pack an even higher emotional payload than many of the series’ prior installments, all while putting the spotlight squarely on one of the series’ supporting characters rather than Tinker Bell herself. The end result is another superb entry in the Tinker Bell franchise that crosses demographic barriers to craft a wonderfully entertaining movie.
Fawn, the foremost Nature Fairy of Pixie Hollow (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin in this film), loves animals so unconditionally that she’ll even assist the Fairies’ most feared natural predators like snakes and hawks. When a strange green comet streaks through the sky, Fawn discovers that it has awakened a gigantic shaggy creature she’s never seen before. The creature, who she gradually befriends and dubs Gruff, starts building massive stone towers in the different regions of Pixie Hollow. However, her choice to keep Gruff’s existence hidden from Pixie Hollow is challenged when the lead Scout Fairy Nyx (Rosario Dawson) discovers an old illustration from a long-forgotten Fairy text, showing a creature that looks like Gruff at the center of a monstrous lightning storm engulfing Pixie Hollow. Nyx and Fawn are tasked by the benign Queen Clarion (Anjelica Huston) to do what they must to keep Pixie Hollow and all its denizens safe. The two are fundamentally at odds over what Gruff means for Pixie Hollow, let alone what to do about him, and their philosophical conflict takes on more urgency as the skies start turning a strange, sickly green.
A character defying convention over a gut feeling is central in all the earlier Tinker Bell movies, except that it has usually been Tinker Bell being the defiant one. Tinker Bell even underscores the point in an amusing throwaway line early in the film. The Pirate Fairy introduced Zarina as the character breaking convention, nearly shoving Tinker Bell off-stage and carrying away the movie herself. Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast follows the same trend, placing Fawn’s unconventional thinking squarely at the center of this movie and relegating Tinker Bell to a supporting role. Fawn has always been my favorite Fairy among Tinker Bell’s supporting cast, and her boisterous sense of optimism and genuinely warm heart make her an enormously appealing lead character (starting right from the blast of an opening sequence that introduces her). Those traits also set up a genuine internal conflict as circumstances shift and she begins to question her own gut instincts. The script and the vocal performance give Fawn plenty of dramatic material to work with, captivating us with her distinct perspective on things even as events unfold to make her (and us) doubt the wisdom of her actions. The end result is a wonderfully deep and satisfying character arc. Some of the twists are predictable, but the movie is swift and nimble enough that we don’t figure them out much sooner than the characters do. The predictability never becomes a hindrance to our enjoyment, since we’re never forced to watch characters painstakingly scripted to avoid the obvious.
If Fawn is the star of Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast, her antagonist Nyx can be equally compelling even if she is inherently less sympathetic. The Scout Fairies she leads are tasked with defending Pixie Hollow, and they do so in a much more physical way than we’ve ever seen in the earlier Tinker Bell movies. If The Pirate Fairy was unusual for injecting a strong action element to the Disney Fairies formula, Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast does the same with Nyx and her elite team of Scouts. In fact, the Scout Faries’ cool moves only whet our appetites for more of their exploits than the movie ultimately provides, but it’s a nice problem to have when a movie creates characters you want to see more of. Nyx turns out to be a powerful voice of practicality, but if Fawn has too much heart then it seems that Nyx has too little. Her single-minded zeal to protect the denizens of Pixie Hollow makes her flaw that she can only see something new or unknown in terms of its potential threat. This creates a very natural conflict between Nyx and Fawn without making Nyx ever feel truly unsympathetic. It’s the same trick that the franchise pulled with Lord Milori in Secret of the Wings, except that Nyx’s motivations are explicit from the outset. Unfortunately, I am left a little disappointed in Rosario Dawson’s performance. She is a go-to actor for mentally and physically tough characters, both on-camera and in voiceover. The intention seems to have been to wire her up tight in a straight-lines-square-corners military type, but I think she’s wound up a little too tight in the end, making her a little too bloodless to my ear.
The movie scores a total success with Gruff, as the lynchpin around which Fawn and Nyx’s conflict revolves. Like Hayao Miyazaki’s Totoro, Gruff manages to be friendly without ever feeling entirely safe or tame. It is very easy to see him as both the misunderstood beastie that Fawn sees and the dangerous monster that Nyx sees. His motivations are also endearingly inscrutable, in the same way we can detect animal intelligence while never feeling that we fully understand it. Considering that Gruff is an entirely fantastical fabrication, a surprising amount of work went into crafting him for animation, mashing up numerous animals into an amalgamation that can feel both familiar and totally alien to our experience. The work they’ve done paid off, since Gruff has a wonderful sense of weight and heft that matches his massive build, paired with a mysterious sense of purpose and enough intelligence to become a believable friend to Fawn. Without giving too much away, I think the ending may soft-pedal one element about Gruff more than is necessary, but even if it’s speaking in a slightly veiled manner, I think the intention is still communicated loud and clear.
Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast comes in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, with a fine 1080p video mated to a rich 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. Pixie Hollow has never looked better, with the movie’s whirlwind tour of all four seasons in Pixie Hollow providing ample opportunity to show off its rich color palette and beautifully textures. The sounds and music of Pixie Hollow are also beautifully presented, and Gruff alone makes a quality sub-woofer worth having. The Blu-ray contains a small but excellent set of bonus features. “5 Essential Ingredients to Getting Gruff” leads us through a tour of DisneyToon Studios, led by director Steve Loter, and packs a tremendous amount of information in just five minutes. Some of this information on the genesis of the movie is repeated in “My Dad’s Movie: The True Story of the NeverBeast,” where Loter takes his precocious 8-year old daughter Calista (a major inspiration for the story) to the Santa Barbara zoo to talk about the movie and explore some real-world big animals. More real-world animals get spotlighted in “Jeff Corwin’s Guide to Real-World NeverBeasts,” hosted by the TV nature personality. If I’ve complained that earlier Tinker Bell movies squandered potential educational experiences, I should make a point to underscore when they do something both fun and educational like the Jeff Corwin featurette. Several deleted scenes are presented in animatic form, with introductions by Steve Loter to detail where they belonged and why they were cut from the finished film. “Tink’n About Animals” is an amusing original short that further extends the educational aspects of the bonus features, as Fawn rattles off a laundry list of unusual names for groups of animals in a song. Finally, “Gruff Love” looks like just a remixed trailer for the movie.
The DVD contains the movie in standard definition video with a 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack, along with the “5 Essential Ingredients,” “Tink’n About Animals,” and “Gruff Love” bonuses. As with all recent Disney home video releases, Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast comes with an unlock code for Disney Movies Anywhere, which remains the best implementation of a “watch anywhere” system yet for the way it seamlessly links the same content for viewing on computers (via iTunes on the Mac) and portable devices (via the Disney Movies Anywhere app). The Disney Movies Anywhere version keeps all the bonus features available on the Blu-ray, and adds an extra featurette of Calista Loter experiencing the completed movie for the first time as an exclusive bonus available only in the app’s “Discover” tab.
While Disney direct-to-video movies were once objects of mostly rightful derision, the quality of the Tinker Bell movies have done much to wholly erase that stain. They have the same kind of universal appeal of the very best of the Disney classics, and Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast is no exception. It’s a comprehensively charming addition to a chain of excellent movies.
