It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Blistering performances.

Well wasn't this just a waste of time. Never ending Story no.2 offers nothing new to us at all. The Original already did that and it certainly didn't need this waste of time.After the first 20 minutes or so of this film, I felt the fantasy was taken out of this film and that really disappointed me as it was classified to be a Fantasy film. In terms of magical elements, it doesn't have them.All the actors have change and that's OK because they did a pretty good job, but.... it's the story and all the concepts that I hated. I'll go through the one that really irritated me and for some reason this became a huge distraction of the film.Bastian now gets to wish for anything he wants cause he's got the oracle. But the kid's character is a total idiot, why doesn't he wish for the entire world of fantasia to just go back to normal.... Instead he does a bunch of other things in which that results in him loosing his memories. The whole wishing concept is just over the top along with other things that they would of worked on. I really tried to like this... 4.7/10

Well, to tell the truth, I did like this sequel when I first saw it. I must have been five or six years old (din't remember it in the movies).When I see it today, there are an assortment of flaws and awkward moments that make it inferior by far with both Ende's novel and it's film predecessor, and overall, inferior to several fantasy movies before it.Some aspects of the novel, including characters like Xayide and events like Bastian's loss of memories are included, but completely altered for the newly conceived story.Bastian's father, only mentioned in the novel, has a bigger part in this movie, giving it a "Spielberg-esque" moralist tone. It's not entirely bad, but it's just not what the original story was about.Half of the movie is Ende's stuff. The rest is made up plots and cheap kiddy fantasy. Don't feel obligated to rent it, but if you do, don't read the novel nor watch Part I first. You may feel disappointed. You also may need to think like a kid to find it amusing.

I, like many others, watched The Never Ending Story as a child and of course loved it, I remembered the characters, the basis of the plot and the lesson. I'm fairly certain I watched the sequels but of them I remembered nothing.Recently, I was using time before an appointment and I came across both The Never Ending Story and The Never Ending Story two for just ten dollars, obviously I could not pass up a chance to upgrade my beloved story to DVD, just in case my VHS died.I digress, so I recently watched them back to back. Aside from replacing all but one of the original actors there didn't seem to be any development from the last story. I expected Bastion to be older physically, but I had also expected him to grow up. He was still the same shy kid but he was dumber. His father some how found a potion to make himself ten years younger then he had been and despite seeming to open up, Bastion still had no friends and couldn't even think about his mother without getting teary. I know, I know, losing someone is always hard, especially a parent, but he was suppose to have moved on in the first movie after he gave the empress a new name. On that topic, may I ask why she seemed to be nameless again in this story?The new actors were... Painfully bad, every action and line seemed over acted to the amount of just being a farce. I never read the book so I have to judge the piece for theatrical value and this has very little. The effects are passable but very little of the story seemed to flow.So to boil it down, Bastion never really grew up, he was just replaced with an older actor, Atreyu, as far as I'm concerned, became a less lovable character. He seemed to lose the smooth, truly native American beauty he had and just became a rough looking sort without the same natural fire and independence.Over all the movie was an eyesore, leave it be and just watch the first.

I recently bought this movie along with the original Neverending Story on a one disc "Double Feature", so naturally I watched both movies back to back. I remember liking both movies when I was a kid, and I especially recall liking this movie when it came out. Jonathan Brandis was a popular child actor back in the early '90's (although not nearly as popular as Macaulay Culkin or Elijah Wood), and John Wesley Shipp was most famous for playing The Flash. I remember liking this movie because I liked these two leads. As I watch it again in my adulthood though, I can see it hasn't aged well with time.The first NeverEnding Story, on the other hand, has aged surprisingly well. Despite having no-name actors in it, it was a very intriguing movie with an original villain (Nothingness). Its sequel appeared to be more formulaic, and the dialogue spoken by most of the human actors was too wooden and unconvincing.I had to laugh also at the main villain in this movie, Xayide (played by Clarissa Burt). I thought it was clever how her and her army of giants were empty inside, which was a clever homage to the original Nothingness that took over Fantasia. However, Xayide seemed more like a jaded runway fashion model from Milan than an actual convincing villain. I'm assuming the character of Bastian was supposed to be ten or eleven, because if he was any older than twelve, he could have used his wishes to have his way with her (i.e. "I wish your clothes would disappear"; "I wish for a camera"). It just didn't seem that the Xayide character created enough conflict, at least not to me.The movie probably would have been better if at least some of the original main actors (not to mention the director, Wolfgang Peterson) were brought back, and the film was made no later than three years after the original movie. It also probably would have eliminated the plot holes better if it has stuck to the original story. For example, Bastian never actually met Atreyu in the original movie, so how did Atreyu know who Bastian was? Also, if every wish Bastian made erased his memories, how did he still know who Atreyu was? Plus, it was never fully explained how the Empty Villains got rid of all the books in the world, or how human in the real world forgot books ever existed. Not to mention that the latter conflict was never resolved in the end.The "Next Chapter" of the NeverEnding Story could have been better in a lot of ways, but was enjoyable in a lot of other ways. I thought the reappearance of Falcor and the Rockeater (and son) was worth watching the movie for alone.