Rated: G
Length: 81 min
Age: 4 + (because of rats; might be okay for 3) Commonsense Media sez: 4+
Scary factor: escaping from red-eyed rats is quite scary, but action-packed and moves along quickly. Encounter with trolls is quickly defused as trolls are more goofy than scary, and easily dodged.
Intense scenes: More troublesome for the very young might be moments of high despair for Tinker Bell, and scenes in which she loses her temper with her friends, however she apologies and learns from all trials.
Warning: Excessive Merchandise Alert!
Interests: fairies, magic, nature, adventure, travel, treasure
(see notes on the Disney Fairies series in review for Tinker Bell)
The second in the Tinker Bell series of films. Queen Clarion entrusts Tinker Bell with the huge responsibility of making the Fall Sceptre, incorporating the precious Moonstone. The sceptre is necessary for a ceremony that marks the beginning of Autumn. Tinker Bell stresses out about the task; she even loses her temper with her best friend Terence, who is just trying to help. Then when she accidentally smashes the Moonstone Tinker Bell feels she can’t tell anyone, not even Terence. Hearing about the Mirror of Incanta, which grants one wish, Tink decides that’s the only way to undo the damage. She sets off in a cotton ball balloon to find the wrecked pirate ship with the mirror in its hold. After many adventures, Tink finds the mirror, but in her impulsive way wastes her wish. Terence shows up, there’s an exciting escape from some scary rats, and as they fly back home Tinker Bell engineers an ingenious solution to her sceptre problem. It’s certainly an unusual design, but the Autumn ceremony is an unqualified success.
In this film Tinker Bell deals directly with her own personality flaws – stubbornness and a hot temper. She has a blow-up with her best friend, and spends the whole movie realizing that she’s got to treat her friends a little better, not blame them for her own mistakes, and try to control her temper. Another pretty good lesson, and it’s always nice to have a hero with flaws.
The story is centred around a voyage and a quest, more of an adventure film than Tinker Bell was. The Big Scary Moment – the escape from the rats – is pretty scary, and more intense than the hawk scene in the first film. (For this reason I rated this film more for age 4 and up, though the other two films are 3+.) It doesn’t help that, for some reason, the rodents have red glowing eyes. The sequence does move along very quickly though. The scene with the trolls is very funny and provides another example of the main lesson of friendship: the two exchange mild insults (“stinky breath”, “unibrow”) until one becomes upset, then the second apologizes and they tearfully make up. Nicely handled, but still, name-calling exchanges like this aren’t terrific models of behaviour.
In conclusion… Terrific lessons on being thoughtful of others and treating your friends well. More adventurous than the first film, but still another fairly gentle, funny, and visually beautiful film for young viewers.
Rarest Kind of Best 