The Neverending Story (1984)

I found this film very.. uh.. Let’s just say interesting. I prefer animation or stop-frame. But this film wasn’t as good. To be honest there weren’t any strong points I didn’t like, it was just LACKING. To me the film title doesn’t make sense, what part of the words ‘Never-Ending’ fit with what happened in the movie?! Everything was confusing but they tried.

So the story starts with a boy named ‘Bastion’ (I thought his name was Sebastian at the start!) who was being chased but old fashion bullies. (Blonde hair, bad attitude, hang out in groups and all that stuff.) Some how to his luck, he quickly hides in a library which was dusty and old. Then he finds an elderly man and he asked him what he is doing that and get his butt out! Then Bastion was all like ”Excuse you but I’ve read 42 books, so you’re not the old man/boy who still read books these days!”. The man hesitates and leaves him be. The man leaves to due a phone call and leaves his creepy old book behind. Sneaky Bastion steals the book out of curiosity and scurries along to school where he finds out he missed a test. Quietly he makes his way up to the attic and reads the book. PLOT TWIST! Turns out the book was meant for him and he gets trapped in a weird world and has to save Fantastia before the fog of nothingness obliterates the whole world. Yay! Fun!

This film is really old, like from the 1980s! One of the biggest pros is the starting theme, NEVER-ENDING STORRRRYYYYY!!! I find that song really fun, bouncy and poppy! It will never get old for me. The green screen should of been better because I could see flakes of green screen when they were using it. HOWEVER since this was again, 1980s I would give it an 4/5. I almost forgot to mention the HORSE. When Atreyu and his horse are in the Swamp of Sadness the mud becomes very deep. (If you come to that place there is sadness everywhere, if you become to sad you will slowly sink into the mud never to be seen again.) All of a sudden they both come to a violent stop. Atreyu could still move around then that means... THE HORSE!! It was so sad to see the horse sink and die, I almost cried! It was so depressing and I just couldn’t watch!

The characters were an interesting pick, I would say maybe The Stonebiter is my favourite because unlike the other characters he’s not that weird. At the start the acting was normal and ordinary but wasn’t boring. But like a little bit towards the end it was more shoutier then usual. (I don’t even think shoutier is a word!) ESPECIALLY the part where the empress and Bastion were shouting, it was so cringeworthy! I hated it, not because it was sad but it was bursting my ears!

I wouldn’t say this would fit as a U because it does have the scary senses such as the death of the horse, (R.I.P horse, we will miss you dearly!) the shouting and other. I would rate this as a 7+ if they could handle a lot of sadness and shouting!