The NeverEnding Story (1984)
A boy who needs a friend finds a world that needs a hero in a land beyond imagination!
Turn around, see a movie from way back. Yeah, I wrote one sentence with a sing-song thought in mind but it’s over already. Anyways, we’re going back to a movie that’s probably caused an entire generation some trauma, and yet somehow still ends up feeling remarkably potent in relevance despite it’s age. We got costumes and props and all sorts of kid actors, in a true book of unending potential. Tonight, we pull out The NeverEnding Story.
The story here is pretty elaborate on a meta level in ways, but also something that can really be boiled down to something super simple. It’s perhaps one of the spots that manages to enshrine the “family friendly” concept - it’s all about a kid with problems whose really attached to books, and ends up finding that one book that’s straight up magical. What happens is a bit of a split story in presentation - the kid, whose reading the book, and mostly the actual happenings in the book. It all intertwines in fancy ways though - so just because it’s a story about a kid on a classic quest to save the world being read by a kid whose got his own problems doesn’t mean that it won’t try to pull some quick ones on you. It’s surprisingly deep for a family movie, although PG movies from back in the day were something else I tell you.
The actors is one of the mixed bags here. Our main leads are kids, and that carries some baggage with the timeframe it was made. They aren’t the worst actors in existence by any means - I mean, I’ve totally seen adults do a far worse job of acting but I also watch actually trash movies. That said, there are few moments that could have been done better - and I don’t think it’s all the actors faults. Sometimes lines can feel a bit pause-and-deliver, as though there’s a delay that should have been left on the cutting room floor but didn’t. There’s other moments where they can do a real good job of selling the mood of the scenes - so mixed like I said. The actor’s in heavy costume stuff do decent with their line deliveries, and sometimes those costumes do have some surprising motion to them to help try and sell things with body language, but in all honesty it feels like my best description for it would be somewhat “story book-y,” where in things have a bit of faff about them that makes it feel like it’s all under a layer of “kid reading a book” for better or worse.
The characters are all over the place in amount of usage, with at times even side characters you barely see getting some hard-hitting moments. Heck, the one scene with the horse probably has the highest trauma count of the movies in it’s generation. Really though, most the character growth is on the kid reading the book through what he’s reading. It’s not necessarily that the kid ends any different then he was - except perhaps leaning even more into the follow your dreams fantasy that he was told to ignore in the beginning before promptly dropping that pursuit outside of a line delivery after he gets dumpstered by some bullies. In turn, the story itself presents a character, as the progression carries with it a heavy commentary on the nature of people and the world we live in. Maybe that’s a positive for people that are looking for good characters, maybe it’s a negative - I don’t really know.
One of the main reasons I opted to do this tonight was because I wanted something with costumes. I just had a hankering, and the buddy watching with me tonight was too young and not as much a ‘need to watch all the movies’ dope like me so I thought it would be a great chance to show him the kind of stuff we all used to have. Yeah, some of it is silly today - that one dude in the audience scene is literally just a big fish head - and the level of costume quality will bounce around from someone whose just shot to look super small to a full on animatronic wolf head. Some things look great - even if obviously not an actual talking wolf, for example - and some things look a little less impressive. Still, it adds a great variety of things to look at outside of just normal person, so it fits what I was looking for when I decided to watch it. Yeah, it also does have a few normal “modern” costumes in there as well.
The effects work is in a similar situation - it looks perhaps surprisingly good considering it’s age, but there’s times you can tell shenanigans are afoot. Some background replacements - whether it’s rear projection or an equivalent - aren’t exactly shy in being noticed, but they don’t really kill it for you like a really bad roto job can. That said, it is still noticeable at times, especially when you occasionally get to see the two layers blending together with the foreground item being slightly see-through when it really shouldn’t be. The nothing is pretty fun to see in it’s billowy glory, The various parts of Fantasia are also pretty neat to see. They use a lot of forced perspective - and I assume a few times of models and miniatures - to pull a lot of tricky size differences in shots as well. The movie is plenty of fun to see if nothing else, and does bring the fantasy into the fantasy tag (which literally seems to be put on everything including bog-standard romance movies these days, driving me right up a wall). That said, there are some bits of issues with continuity or consistency, such as when there’s a kid standing on a giant turtles back and we cut to wide and he’s not there anymore.
Audio is good here. Balance, not quite as much. Maybe it’s just a side effect of watching it on Amazon, maybe it’s just because it’s an old movie, but either way it is what it is. Music is great, constantly doing it’s job but also carrying some interesting synth-ish tones at parts. Of course, most anyone who has heard it knows the theme song, and i can say that it’s stuck in my head for years and I thoroughly enjoy it’s upbeat energy despite it not being something you would expect out of me given my normal musical tastes. Past the audio and everything else, there’s plenty in here for the thinking person. Yes, some of it is classic family movie fair - believe in yourself, cope with grief, that sort of stuff. Some of it is bluntly stated as a commentary on the social affairs of the time (and rather honestly even current times) of people becoming disillusioned with the world and giving up on their dreams to just kind of be floating around empty in a depressed stupor as they go about the everyday while being controlled by secretive power-hungry forces. I probably paraphrased a little there, but between that and a swamp that kills a horse with the powers of depression-fueled gravity, it’s relatively safe to say that regardless of the rest of it all thinking folks can probably find a lot to talk about from this one.
When you come back to it in modern times as an older person, the movie loses a lot of it’s edge and terror that it might have once carried. As a younger folk, you may have been terrified by the Gmork, traumatized by the swamp, and entranced by giant dog-headed dragon (and by entranced, I mean probably also terrified). As an adult, your finding yourself more latched onto the rock biter and his big strong hands line, relating to the giant ancient turtle and it’s youth allergies, being traumatized by swamp, or nodding along with the “to close to home” nature the truth to what Gmork says. You got some decent effects and costumes, some good music that helps support the scenes, and a story that although a bit cheese covered still can resonate with a modern audience for the most part. Now go ahead and walk around your house yelling Atreyu, the only people that are going to judge you are the ones that can hear you.