Audrey Roeder
Staff Writer
March 21, 2024
Before I get into my thoughts and reviews on Tinker Bell I need to give some background information about why I choose to watch Tinker Bell. I’m a Junior in high school and I’ve barely seen any popular Disney movies from when I was a kid; so I decided to start watching them all. I don’t have a specific reason why I chose to watch Tinker Bell first other than it being mentioned to me numerous times in the past week.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie and I would give it an 8/10. I liked the music throughout the movie, specifically the opening song, "To The Fairies They Draw Near" by Loreena McKennit. I thought the animators did fantastic with the graphics and animations throughout, such as the nature backgrounds, the attention to detail with each fairy's unique outfit, and all the little houses and villages the fairies lived in. I specifically loved Tinker Bell’s house, the younger me would’ve been obsessed with it.
Tinker Bell’s house is breathtaking - The steps climbing up the tree branch, the moss scaling the walls, and the adorable acorn-top door are all so perfect.
I thought the plot of the movie was interesting, despite it being a kids' movie, it kept me engaged the whole time. However, as the movie progressed I was confused about one thing: Tinker Bell’s age. Her age, and all the fairies, are never really mentioned during the movie, which makes sense because most kids aren’t focused on how old Tinker Bell could be; but as someone older than the target demographic, this stuck out to me. At the beginning of the movie, the narrator says “The First time a baby laughs a fairy’s life takes flight” and we see a baby, who we later learn is Wendy, laugh, triggering the start of Tinker Bell's birth. Once born, she appears to be the same age as most of the other fairies and doesn’t seem to age throughout the film. This caused me to think perhaps the fairies in Pixie Hollow never age, but that can’t be true because there are older fairies such as Queen Clarion and Fairy Mary.
Another thing that puzzled me about Tinker Bell’s age comes at the very end of the movie when she goes to the mainland to deliver the music box to the girl who had lost it. The time between Tinker Bell’s birth and her going back to the mainland seems to be only a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, because the fairies are getting ready to transform winter into spring. However, once Tinker Bell gets to the mainland and goes to Wendy's, previously seen at the beginning of the movie, the window we see that Wendy is no longer an infant but she is now a child most likely around the age of eight. Even after doing research I still could not find any information relieving my questions about her age. I’m not shocked by this as Tinker Bell is a kids' movie and is about fictional creatures.
Putting the confusion of Tinker Bell’s age aside, I thought Tinker Bell was a dynamic, interesting character. At the beginning of the movie, Tinker Bell is a little shy but warms up to fairies easily. She's smart, adventurous, kind, and confident—all obvious traits of the protagonist. Although she’s meant to be a Tinker Fairy and she’s very creative and good at tinkering she starts to have a hard time accepting herself as a Tinker, which becomes her greatest flaw.
Tinker Bell’s natural creativeness- shortly after looking in her wardrobe, Tinker Bell transforms the dress pictured on the left into her signature dress, pictured on the right.
Thankfully she makes some great friends that try to help her with her identity crisis. Right after her ceremony that announced she was a Tinker fairy two Tinker fairies, Clank and Bobble, introduced themselves to her. Clank and Bobble are the classic dynamic duo of the dumb one and the smart one and the comic relief characters seen throughout the film industry. Clank and Bobble kind of become Tinker Bell’s safety net friends; they show her around and lie to keep her out of trouble but they still love her, as does she. Not only is the duo the first people she meets, they’re also her only close friends with the same talent as her, so they grow a great bond throughout the movie. Although I do love Clank and Bobble’s jokes and banter, they aren’t the only group of friends I love. Tinker Bell’s other group of friends; Silvermist, Iridessa, Fawn, and Rosetta might be my favorite.
Tinker Bell & her friends: [listed left to right] Fawn, Tinker Bell, Silvermist, Rosetta, and Iridessa
I love how each and every one of these characters and I think the dynamic of this friend group is very interesting. They all come from different talent groups; Silvermist is a water fairy, Iridessa is a light fairy, Fawn’s an animal fairy, and Rosetta is a garden fairy. Their difference in talents doesn’t stop them from being an amazing friend group that is always so supportive and welcoming, especially to Tinker Bell at the beginning of the movie. I love the positive atmosphere the fairies have created to welcome everyone. Unfortunately, not every fairy can be good.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a good movie without the classic protagonist there to butt heads with the main character. Pretty much from the start, I could tell Vidia, a fast-flying fairy, wasn’t good news. From her first conversation with Tinker Bell I picked up on how rude, self-absorbed, and belittling Vidia is. Although Vidia is the textbox definition of an antagonist, we see a very minimal amount of conflicts between her and Tinker Bell. In most cases, the antagonist is constantly butting heads with the main character or is trying to sabotage them, but in this movie, we only see this relationship between Vidia and Tinker Bell a few times. Other than Vidia tricking Tinker Bell into trying to catch the Sprinting Thistles, TinkerBell seems to be her own worst enemy and is constantly self-sabotaging herself while trying to change who she truly is.
As I mentioned before, I thought the plot was pretty engaging, especially for a kid's movie. I really liked the beginning when Tinker Bell was learning all about Pixie Hollow and when she was meeting everyone. I love how everyone immediately welcomed Tinker Bell and Made her feel part of the whole, as well as how everyone continued to be loving to her even after she constantly messed up(which she does a lot).
At the beginning of the movie, everything is going well for Tinker Bell, she’s meeting everyone, getting a tour of Tinker’s Nook, and learning about the changing of the seasons, she’s thriving; that is until she has a run-in with the Sprinting Thistles. She causes an accident with the Springing Thistles which in hand causes some of the preparations for the spring to be ruined, but nothing too detrimental. This situation sparks Tinker Bell’s fixation on trying to become any other fairy besides a Tinker. Eventually, she convinces her friends to try to ‘train’ her to become another type of fairy; however, all her attempts are unsuccessful and typically end in Tinker Bell messing something up.
That aside, I really enjoyed the montages of all her friends trying to teach her, I thought they were quite humorous. I also loved the scene between Terrance, the dust-keeper, and Tinker Bell. My younger self might not have caught onto it but, I think it’s obvious Terrance has a crush on Tinker Bell even though we only see them talk in one scene. Unlike other Disney movies, there wasn’t a main love interest for the main character that dominated the plot.
I loved the end of the movie when Tinker Bell went to the mainland. The montage of all the fairies transforming the mainland from winter to spring was beautifully done. Finally, one of my favorite scenes was when Tinker Bell returned the music box to Wendy and then we saw her fly away with a trail of pixie dust falling behind her. I thought it was cool that the end of Tinker Bell ties or transitions into the beginning of Peter Pan.
Lastly, I loved the themes that were portrayed throughout the movie. We see the themes; of teamwork, friendships, hard work, and most importantly self love and acceptance, in many different ways in the movie. Obviously, the importance of friendship is seen between all the fairies in Pixie Hollow. For the most part, all the fairies welcome one another to be friends, and it seems like all the fairies are friends and get along pretty well. We also see the importance of hard work and teamwork from all the fairies. After Tinker Bell ruined all the preparations for Spring everyone was very upset with her, even her friends. However, that didn’t stop them from coming together to save Spring after Tinker Bell showed everyone her inventions. I think the montage of everyone working hard perfectly displays the unity there is in their community. While friendship, teamwork, and hard work are all very prominent in the movie I think the big lesson is self-acceptance. I think this was captured perfectly in this movie.
As Tinker Bell learns Tinker fairies don’t go to the mainland she immediately starts to dislike being a Tinker fairy. She wants to go to the mainland so badly that she’s willing to try and change herself. She convinces all her friends to teach her their talents. Each time Tinker Bell tries to be a different type of fairy she fails, creates a mess, and ends up more and more frustrated with herself for being a Tinker. Tinker Bell progressively hates being a Tinker more and more. She was so frustrated about being a Tinker that she yelled at Clank and Bobble about how being a Tinker is stupid, causing a rift in their friendship. After unsuccessfully trying to be a water, light, and animal fairy her friends tell her they don’t think it's a good idea to keep trying to be someone else. Tinker Bell is so upset she storms off, once again causing a rift in her friendships. Tinker Bell is so desperate to be something she isn’t she begs Vidia to teach her to be a fast-flying fairy. Unfortunately, Vidia tricks Tinker Bell into chasing Sprinting Thistles. Tinker Bell accidentally chases the thistles out of the field and into Tinker’s Nook, destroying months of work worth of preparations for spring. This is the moment Tinker Bell finally sees her efforts are just making everything worse. Late at night, Tinker Bell meets with Terrance and she gives him a speech about how he should be proud of his talent because everyone’s roles are important in their society; therefore making her realize her self-worth. Then she goes back to her house and starts doing what she does best, Tinkering. She creates a bunch of inventions that could help quickly restore all the damage she caused.
This message of loving yourself for who you are is really important and influential so it’s amazing that it's portrayed in a kid's movie. Self-confidence and acceptance are huge struggles for a lot of people. As kids grow up people start to become more judgmental so kids start caring about what others think and changing themselves for other people. When in reality, it’s only going to cause issues in their own personal self-worth which is why I feel it’s very important to teach kids self-love at a young age but not every kid has an influential person in their life to teach them these things, so it’s great that important messages like this are being put into kids' movies.
Overall, I really enjoyed Tinker Bell. I have nothing bad to say, it was entertaining, informative, and all-around a good movie and I would absolutely watch it again! Although I do wish I would’ve watched it when I was younger, as it would definitely be a favorite of mine.