THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 12, 1995 TAG: 9506120047
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
When children, moved by Disney's lovely film on Pocahontas, read history books they will be taken aback that Captain John Smith was a grown man, 42, bearded, not a sort of young, blond Hulk Hogan as seen in the film's debut.
Further, when the three ships of settlers landed at Jamestown in 1607, the Indian maid was only 12, no older than today's adoring fans.
She cartwheeled with the ships' cabin boys into the settlers' stockade and onto the stage of history.
Some historians will glower at Hollywood's reshaping history; but, one thing's sure, Americans never again will make the mistake of thinking the three ships pulled up at Plymoutn Rock. Disney has planted them firmly on the banks of the James where they belong.
Tourist hordes will flock to Jamestown in a long-deferred pilgrimage. In its fine museum they will begin to appreciate the deeper, even more dramatic truth.
Something of the excitement the film engenders was evident in an exchange Sunday between reviewers Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. It became quite testy.
Both gave the film thumbs up and praised the rendering of the characters and the beauty of the Virginia woodland, symbolizing, said Siskel, ``the purity and potentail of the land'' that the English forthwith began to despoil.
``I liked the film a lot and wished it went on longer,'' Siskel said. ``I guess I'll have to settle on seeing it again soon.''
He liked it, Ebert said, but he ranked it fifth behind ``The Little Mermaid,'' ``Beauty and the Beast,'' ``Aladdin'' and ``The Lion King.''
Siskel put it in the middle.
``It doesn't have a really fun villain,'' Ebert said, like the Octopus in ``The Little Mermaid.''
The movie, as a result, ``is kind of serious and a little bit of a downer at times,'' Ebert said.
```What's wrong with that?'' demanded Siskel.
It lacked the entertainment value of the others, Ebert said.
Siskel objected that ``Pocahontas'' was ``the real stuff,'' not fantasy. ``The film communicates on a whole different level. The entertainment value is in the drawing out of great themes. I think it is a real special piece of work!'' (You'd have thought Siskel's daughter was playing Pocahontas in a class play.)
When Smith boasts of people and places he has known, she draws him to the wonders of the new world and sings: ``You think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like you, but if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you learn things you never knew you never knew.''
The refrain keeps echoing in my unmusical head. As for the film's being a downer, little girls will like the haunting farewell of Pocahontas and John Smith.
In life, the girl-child had an abiding crush - love, really - for the doughty little captain; but the usually canny, observant John Smith failed to comprehend its depth.
One day I'll tell you why I know. ILLUSTRATION: Color illustration
The real 12-year-old Indian princess Pocahontas loved a 42-year-old
bearded adventurer - not a blond 17th-century caricature of today's
Hulk Hogan.
by CNB