The NeverEnding Story

Alice: "I see nothing."
Cheshire Cat: "My.  You have good eyes."

In Wolfgang Peterson's "The NeverEnding Story," we have a motherless son whose father doesn't understand him; he's bullied into a trash can and daydreams of unicorns in spite of being afraid of horses. Clearly unable to fit in, he receives a nasty tirade from an angry bookstore owner about "small rectangular things" called books that clearly a boy like him wouldn't be interested in. He insists that he is, and "borrows" the book and runs to school. Afraid of his math test, he hides in the school's attic to read "The NeverEnding Story."

Though Bastian, the boy book thief, is missing his math test, things could be worse: Nothingness could be destroying his existence. This is the situation the people of Fantasia of "The NeverEnding Story" find themselves in. Nothing is destroying them. A dark pit of nothing is the enemy here--not some witch or warlock or evil eye.  Pick your metaphor; perhaps it represents cancer, or nuclear proliferation, or something else (an explanation is given, one that adults will find a bit silly). Hamlet famously pondered if he should be or not be, but the characters of Fantasia aren't as hesitant: Atreyu, a young warrior, is chosen, even though he is only a pre-teenager. He has no idea how to stop the Nothing, but he journeys anyways.

Atreyu has challenges, and it's quite the journey to seek out an answer nearly impossible to find. The Greek philosopher Parmenides argued that nothingness is impossible, because everyone speaks of something that, in some sense, exists. For Atreyu, this is irrelevant. Something is Nothing, and it's killing his home; Nothing is the enemy, and Nothing is everywhere. In the meantime, he has to deal with a whole host of other problems, including a malicious wolf chasing him.

Heavens to Betsy, there are actual sets here (instead of green screens), makeup effects and puppetry (as opposed to CGI animation), and matte paintings (instead of something that somebody punched into a computer). From the opening moment of our introduction to Fantasia, we are met with wondrous things: a snail-racer (Deep Roy) and an odd goblin-like creature (Tilo Pruckner) discussing the terrible situation with a giant, talking rock (voiced by Alan Oppenheimer, who provides the voice for numerous other characters). They're hardly in the rest of the film. I first watched "The NeverEnding Story" as a boy years ago, and this time I got chills down my spine watching it, even though I hardly remembered the scenes (more on that later).

"The NeverEnding Story" is not as visually stunning as "Legend," and this movie shows the limitations of puppetry and non-computer generated imagery. There is a dumb-looking dog-dragon, who creepily winks at Atreyu after mentioning to him that Atreyu talks in his sleep. This "dragon" frequently rescues Atreyu, making it deus ex machina at its worst.  As far as performances, it's a fairly likable and believable performance from Barret Oliver as the young boy reading the story, though most of the screen time features Noah Hathaway as Atreyu. Hathaway is fine as Atreyu, though his intonation always seems to follow the same pattern when he says something like "WOW! LOOK at the DRAgon!"

Children will like the film, if they can tolerate the fact that they've already seen various different stories just like it. There are numerous cliches in it: witches and wizards, a boy on a quest, a land called Fantasia, and a bunch of strange creatures that look like their next stop is the Cantina from "Star Wars." The scenes that really work are the ones that present something new to the genre: like a humorous scene involving an archaic tortoise who's allergic to youth, and another quite dark one involving the Swamps of Sadness. In this scene, if sadness overtakes those who enter, they sink into the swamp. There's nobody there to clap and make one's pet come back to life, but it's still a fairly enjoyable movie.