“Have you ever wondered how nature gets its glow? Who gives it light and color as the seasons come and go?”
With those two short sentences, kids of all ages are drawn into Disney’s latest CG animated movie Tinker Bell. The feisty fairy we all know and love as Peter Pan’s wing man (er, girl) finally gets her due with her own movie. It starts at the very beginning, when a baby’s first laugh takes flight to Pixie Hollow, Neverland. On arrival wings morph and, in this case, Tinker Bell, a new fairy, is born.
There’s a lot to absorb in the beginning of this movie. Finding out how fairies come about is just a small part of it. Pixie Hollow, where they live and work, is shown for the first time on film. Each season has its own realm. The inhabitants are responsible for making sure that theirs runs smoothly on ‘the mainland’ in a proper fashion. These are the Nature Fairies: Water, Flower, Light, Animal, and Garden. During the course of the movie, Tink will become close friends with some of them and they join in to help her in her adventures.
Tink's clan are the Tinker fairies who live in the aptly titled “Tinker’s Nook.” Tink’s new pals Phineas (a.k.a. Bobble) and Clank are picked to show her the ropes. Off they go to wardrobe so that she can suit up. After a bit of smart tailoring and hair-styling on her part, the familiar-looking pixie emerges. Once she is all put together, it’s time for her to learn what life as a tinker means. Unlike the glamorous Nature Fairies, who get to take their creations to the mainland to make one season change to the next, tinkers stay where they are, toiling away making the pots, pans, baskets, etc that are used by all the others.
This doesn’t sit well with our Tinker Bell. She doesn’t think her talent for tinkering is special, at least not enough to let her fly to the mainland with all the others. So she and her friends spend a great deal of time and effort trying to make her into what she wants to be, which is just like them. In the end Tink learns that having faith, trust, a little pixie dust, and a few good friends, anything, even magic, can happen when you are true to yourself.
The stellar cast Disney put together do a wonderful job of bringing all the characters to life. Mae Whitman (Independence Day, Hope Floats) is Tinker Bell and the first to give the pixie an actual speaking voice. America Ferrera (Ugly Betty, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 1 and 2) is Animal Fairy, Fawn. Raven-Symoné (The Cosby Show, College Road Trip) plays Iridessa, a light fairy. Rosetta, a garden fairy, is voiced by Kristin Chenoweth (Pushing Daisies, Stranger Than Fiction). Lucy Liu (Dirty Sexy Money, Chicago) plays Silvermist, a Water Fairy. Singer-songwriter Jesse McCartney (Summerland) lends his voice to Terence, keeper of the pixie dust, and Anjelica Huston (Prizzi’s Honor, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) reigns over Pixie Hollow as the voice of Queen Clarion.
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