When I first watched The NeverEnding Story at the age of seven, I thought to myself, "Yes... it really is never-ending." How does a 97-minute long film with a thin plot and no sexual tension manage to feel so eternal? I don't know- it may have been my fragile developing mind. Watching "The NeverEnding Story" in a packed movie theater with a bunch of drunk and high college students made it feel much shorter.

The film starts out with Bastian (Barret Oliver), an often bullied elementary student who waltzes into a bookstore one day and finds a book called "The NeverEnding Story." It contains many admirable concepts. It's hero is a boy named Atreyu (Noah Hathaway). By and large, the villain is a bizarre "nothing" which continues to consume everything in the fictional land of Fantasia. To make sense of "the nothing," one must examine certain pieces of dialogue. A gargantuous rock-eating monster says that his land used to have a beautiful lake, but one day it was "gone." His friends ask, "Did it dry up?" He answers, "No... it just wasn't there anymore." "The nothing," physically represented, is a mass of clouds which mysteriously keeps growing. Fantasia, run by an Empress (Tami Stronach) who inhabits an Ivory Tower, is dying because of "the nothing." The Empress calls on Atreyu to fight the eeeevil villain. He begins his quest, and yadda-yadda-yadda, but as the story progresses, mysterious happenings occur in which Bastian discovers that he has been included in the novel... dun dun dun.

In my experience (and likely yours), Wolfgang Petersen is an overrated and uncannily sought after director. His depiction of drama is weak and destroys most of his films, such as "The Perfect Storm" and the heinous Troy (why the hell he's directing "Ender's Game" in 2007 is beyond me). However, Petersen does happen to excel at displaying chaos, and with Fantastic existence being perpetually destroyed in "The Neverending Story," the film succeeds. One particularly powerful scene involve Atreyu's horse sinking in the admirably innovative Swamp of Sadness- while the drunk kids were all laughing, I thought it was pretty sad.

We also can't forget that this film is just plain cute. It starts off with movie-titled 80s music, and ends the same way. We spend our time following an animal-loving prepubescent kids around, and most of the characters he runs into are fun for kids and adults alike. But that visually unpleasing "luck dog," Falcor, does present some possible allusions to pedophilia, and that's creepy.

You may be dissatisfied with the in-jokes and elbow-nudges that leak from Disney and Dreamworks films today, but aside from Falcor, "The Neverending Story" has a solid mix of entertainment for kids and adults, along with a message that will encourage everyone's imagination.

Rating: B

Recommended:
Yes