For much of the past decade, Disney has cranked out direct-to-video sequels to its past hits for the famously undiscriminating kiddie home-video audience. That practice takes a perverse twist with Peter Pan: Return To Never Land, a cheap-looking sequel that inexplicably received the theatrical release cruelly denied to The Return Of Jafar, Lion King 2: Simba's Pride, and Pocahontas II: Journey To A New World, among many others. Taking place several decades after the original 1953 film, Never Land finds a grown-up Wendy caring for her adorable, doe-eyed son and glum, pixie-dust-impaired daughter amid the horror of a London ravaged by the bloodshed of WWII, in a surprisingly bleak opening for an opportunistic kiddie sequel. But soon, Wendy's strident daughter is kidnapped by the hulking, computer-animation-assisted flying ship of Captain Hook, who spirits her away to Never Land under the mistaken impression that she's her mother. Never Land gets off to a surprisingly strong start, thanks to several dazzling computer-animation setpieces that vividly demonstrate the medium's potential, particularly in Never Land's kaleidoscopic entryway, which looks like it was designed by Peter Max. But it doesn't take long for the film to run out of energy, ideas, and inspiration, and once Wendy's daughter makes it to Never Land, the film crawls to a halt, its pace further marred by anemic, time-wasting pop songs. Even at 72 minutes, Never Land feels padded, while the animators make Never Land so unmagical that war-torn London seems preferable by comparison. Peter Pan: Return To Never Land extols the virtues of faith and wide-eyed, childlike wonder, but the whole enterprise seems powered less by hope and pixie-dust than by an adult brand of cynical calculation.