Metacritic reviews

Disney's 33rd animated feature, and its first with characters based on real people, is a stunning movie with clever twists, vivid characterizations, insightful songs and a surprising harvest of revisionist history that manages to ring smartly as pure entertainment.

Taking advantage of the studio's breathtakingly intricate animation, directors Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg have breathed vitality into this, the fifth "new wave" Disney animated picture.

Gloriously colorful, cleverly conceived and set in motion with the usual Disney vigor, Pocahontas is one more landmark feat of animation.

Pocahontas' arrow, tipped with tender romance and feathered with spirited folklore, hits the bulls-eye dead on.

The film looks great, the songs are wonderfully visualized, and the characters are appealing.

With an original score by Alan Menken and Gilbert and Sullivan-ish songs by Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, the movie is the cartoon equivalent of a full-scale, high-quality Broadway musical.

The animation in Pocahontas is a testament to the constantly evolving skills of the various animators involved, drawing characters that manage to make an impact, even if only a small one.

Contradictions confound certain aspects of this project--such as the language spoken by Pocahontas (which, in the Hollywood tradition, oscillates between tribal talk and the unaccented chatter of a contemporary Valley girl)--but overall this seems like a reasonable stab at an impossible agenda.

Disney deserves praise for raising the ante on its ambitions in animation. Next time, though, a little less civics lesson and a little more heart.

The scenario (written by Carl Binder, Susannah Grant and Philip Lazebnik) is disappointingly wan and obsequious.