If there's anything more egregiously blasphemous about modern-day Disney to their gloried legacy is their compulsion to churn out ultimately unnecessary and sub-par sequels of their most classic animated movies. I say this because Walt Disney himself didn't believe in sequels to his animated features and always wanted to move onto the next one, except for Fantasia which he had originally envisioned as an ongoing concert film franchise.

Since the mid-1990's, most of Disney's more atrocious animated sequels like The Return Of Jafar and The Little Mermaid II: Return To Sea deservedly went straight-to-video. However, as Disney's fortunes with their theatrically released traditional animated movies were getting ever closer to completely crashing, they decided to actually release one of their obviously straight-to-video sequels theatrically. The end result is Return To Never Land, now available on DVD in an all-new "Pixie-Powered Edition".

It's about twenty years later since the events of the original Peter Pan. Wendy Darling (Kath Soucie) is all grown-up and married with two children, but even as an adult, she is still fond of Peter Pan and his many adventures and passes them down to the next generation.

However, London is in crisis as World War II hits and Wendy's husband Edward (Roger Rees) is called to fight against Nazi Germany. His departure deeply upsets Wendy's nine-year old daughter Jane (Harriet Owen), whose witnessing of wartime society has left her jaded and bitter towards enjoying her childhood and, especially, enjoying her mother's stories of Peter Pan.

However, one night, Jane is kidnapped by Pan's longtime enemy Captain Hook (Corey Burton) and his band of pirates, who mistakes her to be Wendy. He uses the little girl as bait for Peter Pan to return some pirate treasure he and the Lost Boys stole from him to play treasure hunt with.

When Pan (Blayne Weaver) and Tinker Bell rescue Jane, they and the Lost Boys want her to play with them, but Wendy's more cynical offspring just wants to go home and her open disbelief in fairies soon causes Pan's pixie's powers to weaken. When Hook encounters Jane, he uses her disenchantment with Pan in order to trick her into luring him and his Lost Boys to him. However, when she backs away from his request, it's too late as Hook captures them and now it's up to Jane to save Tinker Bell and rescue everyone.

While this continuation of Peter Pan is just as unnecessary as every other Disney animated sequel, the basic concept works enough that it could have been made into a fairly good movie. However, any chance of making Return To Never Land into an above average film is completely squandered by how underdeveloped everything seems here, from the weak plot to the lazy script to the lifeless animation and songs, which not even the short running time and quick pace