Disney's current trend of releasing straight-to-video (and massively inferior) sequels to its classic films took a new twist in early 2002 with the theatrical release of Return to Neverland, a sequel to Peter Pan, considered by many to be one of the studio's finest productions. That it fared less than convincingly is hardly a surprise. For the music, the producers took a fairly hodge-podge route, interspersing various disparate songs with an original score by Joel McNeely.

The songs are curious. The opening pop tune, "Do You Believe in Magic?" - performed by kiddy poppers BBMak - is surprisingly not that bad, and the two songs performed by the peculiarly-monikered Jonatha Brooke (including the classic "Second Star to the Right" by Sammy Fain and Sammy Cahn) quite beautiful, showing off a wonderful voice. The character songs which are interspersed with the score are not pleasant to hear; devoid of much personality and of the kind that will make most adults dive for cover, they are not welcome inclusions.

Those who followed the early scores of Joel McNeely will recall that he made quite a career for himself in assembling wonderfully-arranged compilations of the music of John Williams and placing them in all manner of different films. Those of a more cynical mind (myself included) would therefore be forgiven for expecting his music for Return to Neverland to recall Williams's score for Hook; it doesn't. The score opens wonderfully promisingly, with the beautiful, balletic Main Title and "The Tale of Pan".

After those two score cues and the first few songs are out of the way, the score takes a different turn and becomes one of those frenetic scores for children's films that you need to be in the right mood to hear. The orchestration and performance are both notably good and the music is exciting and fun; but it's also very much in the vein of Randy Newman's Pixar scores, in that it is so relentlessly frenetic and ever-changing that it can grate a little after a few minutes. There's one notable exception and that's the wonderful "Flight Through Neverland", a highlight piece. (Shades of Michael Kamen's 101 Dalmatians score, probably one of the very finest entries in the genre of music for family films, occasionally abound as well, especially in "Hook and the Lost Boys", though these are merely stylistic and there is certainly no suggestion of copying.)

The most annoying thing really is that the character songs are littered throughout the score. I can understand that the target audience for the album is probably that group of children who enjoyed the film and they will be far more interested in the songs than the score, but they do distract from the score to a very large degree and I wish the songs had been clumped together at the beginning or end of the album.

Overall, this is a highly-entertaining and endearing orchestral score from a composer who seems to be making a belated (and most welcome) return to the mainstream film music scene.

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