Watch 8 Minutes Of Tinkerbell And The Great Fairy Rescue: It's Better Than You'd Think

I don’t think anyone who’s over the age of eight has really been expecting much from Disney’s upcoming direct to DVD release Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue. Rightfully, we’ve all sort of dismissed it as yet another cynical Disney cash grab which waters down their brand by churning out cheaply produced, direct-to-DVD garbage. It’d be easy to overlook, if Disney hadn’t already promised repeatedly that they were going to cut this sort of thing out. They haven’t, but maybe it’s not as bad as we’d feared.

Below we have a full eight minutes from Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue and while it’s far from what you’d call good, it’s also not really as awful as maybe we had every right to expect. It’s actually kind of a mixed bag, which is almost a step up for the direct-to-DVD genre. Sure it contains another one of those annoying child characters who talk too much, and sure the fundamental nature of Tinkerbell has been watered down to change her from a petulant and selfish creature into the ideal, little kid best friend. But they’ve avoided actually making Tink talk and instead went through the trouble to come up with a little device which allows us to hear what Tink says while everyone else only hears the traditional fairy bells. Maybe the animation’s kind of low rent, the stuff you might have seen as a cut scene in a video game ten years ago, but the production design isn’t bad and it really does have the feel of a story that might have happened a couple of streets over from where the events of Peter Pan happened in the home of the Darlings.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that this could have been worse, a lot worse. There’s still no way anyone over the age of eight will have any interest in seeing it, but maybe if you’re a parent, you don’t have to feel quite so guilty about letting your kid watch it. Check out 8 minutes from Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue below:

Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray September 21st.