L'Histoire sans fin 3 : Retour à Fantasia

The first movie was great. The second wasn't so great, though it's not quite as bad as you've heard. Especially with there now being an even WORSE entry to this series - this being it!

Someone questioned why Warner Bros. didn't have the distribution rights to this entry. Well, at first they did. I remember reading a (very negative) review of this movie in "Variety" magazine, and Warner Bros. was set to distribute. It's quite obvious now that Warner Bros. threw away its distribution option (probably after seeing how horrible this movie is), and Miramax picked it up for a tiny release that lasted 5 minutes. (In my city, it only played for a few weekend matinees).

Oh yeah, what did I think of this movie? Quite frankly, it sucked. What were they thinking when they decided to jazz up the movie with contemporary rock 'n roll???? And most of the movie actually takes place not in the fantasy world, but in this world. The characters are especially obnoxious (especially the rock baby), and suffer from stereotypes. Plus, the movie seems to have forgotten a lot of what happened previously - the hero's dad knew about Fantasia, so the hero didn't have to hide anything from him - but for some reason, the hero keeps the incidents he was involved in a secret. The low point comes where the climax is not solved with magic or intelligence - but with karate. Yes, karate.

Sadly, the running joke of Engywook and Urgl having to go to the bathroom, but being unable to do so, is one of the entertaining things about this film. But it does get tiresome. And the baby rock-biter is cute, if incredibly stupid. But if you have ever seen the first movie, or read the book, you will most likely not care for this movie at all. The plot is poor, Falcore looks extremely cartoonish as do the Rockbiters, and the Nasties...well, they just aren't that scary. Give me Gmork any day, please!

This is a tolerable children's movie ONLY if you have no other knowledge of The Neverending Story.

When this film showed up on the cable listing, I had a sudden urge to see it even though I knew it was probably going to be terrible. The original was such a staple of my childhood, yet had such an incomplete ending, that I was intensely curious to see what they would do with another sequel. Besides, I knew that it could not possibly be worse than "The NeverEnding Story II."

Boy, was I wrong.

"The NeverEnding Story III" has rightly earned its place among IMDb voters as the 79th worst movie of all time. It is so bad that, in writing this review, I risk making it sound like it's worth watching, sort of like "Plan Nine from Outer Space." I assure you, this film is in no way in the Ed Wood category of being so incompetently done that it becomes enjoyable to watch. Those moviegoers who take pleasure in seeing cinematic disasters should be forewarned about this one, lest they never again be able to erase from their memory Rockbiter's gravelly-voiced version of "Born to be Wild," played in a video sequence early in the film and again during the end credits.

No, I am not joking.

The second film does have its admirers, and as much as I hated it, I sort of understand where they're coming from. At least that film had a legitimate purpose, to tell the second half of the novel which the first film had neglected to do. But now the story is finished, so the third film has to make up its own reason for being, with an even shabbier budget than that of the second film. So it concocts a story that allows us to see as little of Fantasia as possible. Here, a series of magical mishaps causes a bunch of creatures from Fantasia to be transported into the real world. These include Falkor the luck dragon, a baby rockbiter about the size of a fountain statue, and a talking tree. (Falkor, who must have gotten a lobotomy sometime between the second and third film, will chase after a "dragon" at a Chinese festival.) What we do see of Fantasia makes the place seem a lot smaller than I had ever imagined. Almost all of the scenes there take place in the empress's chamber in the Ivory Tower, though there is also one sequence where we get to see Rockbiter's home (just what I've always wanted to do!) with Mama Rockbiter and of course the previously mentioned Baby Rockbiter sitting in front of a large stone TV set. Needless to say, the inhabitants of Fantasia seem to possess quite a bit more knowledge of Earth than they did in the first film. When the gnome describes Bastian as "not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger in the muscle department," we're reminded how much more enjoyable the film would probably be if Schwarzenegger were actually in it.

The cause of these events is that a gang of school bullies steals the book and discovers that it gives them the power to wreak havoc on the inhabitants of Fantasia. Strangely, these modern kids never seem surprised that magic exists. Think how long it took in the first film for even imaginative, ten-year-old Bastian to become convinced of the book's supernatural qualities. These bullies, much older and more concrete, never go through such a skeptical period. And later, when the Auryn falls into the hands of a teenage girl, she treats it with about the same level of awe as if she got hold of her parents' credit card.

There are actually some familiar actors in this mess. Mr. Koreander is played by the British character actor Freddie Jones, Bastian is played by the kid from "Free Willy," and the main bully is played by a relatively young Jack Black, who now probably would like to do with this film what George Lucas wants to do with the "Star Wars Holiday Special."

This movie does belong in a class by itself: Even worse than utterly terrible. I have been an aficionado of 'bad' movies for quite a long time, adoring those movies which only a group of friends and many drinks makes enjoyable. This movie was in fact so amazingly bad that I could not watch it past the first half hour or so. I only watched the rest via fast-forward the next morning. I've seen many films worse considered classically bad, this one beat them all hands down. I even had to start referring to possibly similar bad movies by saying "They may be in the NS3 category". There are those bad movies that are MST3K fun and then there are those that make you wish you had a sharp object to commit suicide with, this one is the latter.

This franchise went from excellent original fantasy, special effects for the genre, and well written characters to bad acting and writing in part 2, to movie of the week actors and rubber puppets in part 3. It's amazing how a film franchise that had such good promise sank faster than Lips Manless after taking "the bath". Especially if you're considering getting this for the kids, at least treat them to the original movie or something like the Peter Barnes inspired fantasy miniseries' from the late 90s.

I cannot begin to describe how awful this movie is. I watched the first Neverending Story when I was 7 or 8 or so, it came out in 1984, the year I was born, and I was absolutely fascinated with it. A few years later I had the pleasure of watching the second one, and although not as good as the first one, I have to say it is one of the better movie sequels I have seen (the people who comment on it give it too harsh criticism) It was still as imaginative and beautiful as the first one, and kept all the main characters. I saw the third one in the movie rental part of our grocery store when I was 14, and I got exited. I immediately rented it and brought it home and popped it in our VCR (you remember VCR's don't you?). It was not much longer after that that I was popping it out again. NES3, for lack of a better term,... sucks. The storyline was as unimaginative and vapid as you could hope for, it takes place in the real world, and not(as the title would have you believe)in Fantasia, and I get the feeling that it is because creating a fantasy world was a little out of their budget. This movie has "low budget" written all over it. The childlike empress isn't even blond! they get some brunette chick who looks nothing like her to play the role. After the fart jokes and potty humor commenced, I just couldn't take it any longer. My advice is don't wast your time and ruin your childhood memories with this piece of refuse.