Everybody likes to be the hero in a story, be it a five year old kid or a 90 year old person and its that part of us that director Wolfgang Petersen is trying to connect to in this movie and in my case, he has successfully done just that. With great visuals, brilliant screenplay, an engaging plot and flawless acting this movie deserves all the hype it gets as more often than not it premiers in almost all the top lists in the genre of fantasy on every major listing across the Internet.
The story follows young Bastian (Barret Oliver) who has just lost his mother and is trying to deal with the loss, which is not really made easy with a rigid father and kids from school bullying him. It is then that he comes across a book which he is warned isn't like the other books he has read. In this book, everything he reads comes real. With curiosity taking the best of him he starts reading the book, The Never Ending Story. In this book, the world of Fantasia is being taken over by an entity referred to as "nothing". With the impending doom for Fantasia from "nothing", a warrior with the name Atreyu (an incredible Noah Hathaway) is called up on by the Empress to find the cure to her failing health, which is being caused due to the the destruction of her kingdom of Fantasia. The rest of the movie is about whether the world of Fantasia will be saved and along with this can the world of Bastian be saved and most importantly, is the Never Ending Story real.
This is a must see movie with anyone with a liking for fantasy movies and a tolerance to appreciate the beauty of something that was made before the advent of CGI. Apart from the underlying theme of the importance of dreaming and being creative, this is a movie with high entertainment value.
