good back-story, and good acting

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

For me, it is important to consider 'Tales' as a television series for kids rather than as a set of feature films. It is a matter of expectations and at that level I consider it to be successful. This is way above the level of many series for kids, in some ways near the level of the best series.Wiki, November 2012, mentioned it as a set of four two hours episodes, USA television and DVD, and 13 one hour episodes, UK television. This is based on a quoted internet reference that no longer exists. My region 2 DVDs are around 90 minutes each, so the 2 hours might have included a lot of advertising time. UK as likely to be approx 30 minute episodes of kids television.The titles of the set of four as Tales From The Neverending Story, 1 The Beginning, 2 The Gift Of The Name, 3 Badge Of Courage and 4 Resurrection. The DVDs are available in regions 1 and 2. I do not know about other regions.Several of the reviews at IMDb appeared to be from people who had come at this from the book, Michael Ende's The Neverending Story (1979), or from a cinema grade feature film, The Neverending Story (1984). As such there tends to be a predictable disappointment, but a lot of positive response despite that.I purchased the disks because of Mona The Vampire. A cartoon series with Emma (Taylor-) Isherwood as the voice of the main part. Those were 1999 and 2001, who is this Emma-Mona? This is another television series for kids, made around the same time, Emma has one of the many supporting roles and is more than just the voice for cartoons.Emma Mona plays Olano and her slightly younger sister, Sally, plays Yonie. Two of the nice guys of the woodland village. Their pictures are on the back cover of my DVDs for episodes 1 and 4. Little sister Sally-Yonie has the red face paint around her eyes and Emma-Mona-Olano has a red line under her eyes that crosses her nose and goes down her nose as well.In episode 4 I only notice Yonie, which is strange. This is a story where history and such can change, reality is not fixed. At the end of episode 3 the remnant of the village was under attack by Big Bad, but appeared to face that successfully, no losses. At the start of episode 4 Big Bad had a new recruit, young and female, mind blank, played by Alexina Cowan, and she was given the name of Gemma. As she is a captive of big bad, Gemma has to go to Bastian's world to do some bad guy stuff. Emma-Mona-Olano now Alexina-Gemma?, with all the appearances of being a really bad guy for most of her part of the story. Emma and Alexina both appear in the end credits of 3 and 4, but the end credits are the biggest imperfection in this series.So I go to this series for the sake of fan stuff re Mona The Vampire, I should expect unreality. But I experience this as very okay in its own right. Ditto, Blake Holsey High, but that is not on DVD.I have not read the book yet, must do that. Meantime I now have a DVD of the 1984 feature and I personally find the storyline to be weak in comparison to this series. Surprise, surprise, I did see the series first. So, the effects are amazing quality for 1984, a big year for this sort of story to appear on the screen.

It is important when watching this series that it is not meant to be a remake of the book. And I will point out that the makers of this show definitely read the book. I was reading through the book and caught mention of a character named Quana (I cannot remember the context) and thought, "flygirl." The one annoying thing is that there seem to be plot jumps. How did Fallin become employed at Coreander's? I prefer the Bastian of the show over the movies, because now he gets to be a boy. I also think the addition of a love interest was a good idea despite its inaccuracy to the book, because that wasn't the goal of the show. Overall, I liked the show although I wouldn't recommend paying money for it. If you can get it for free though, go ahead and watch it.

This movie is an utter perversion of Ende's Fantastica. I'm just glad that he didn't live to see this piece of horrible junk. I, unfortunately got this as a gift and after about ten minutes of watching it I was ticked off. The people who made this show, obviously, never even looked at the book. The fans of the book and the movies already went through enough with the creation of The Neverending Story III so we didn't need this blow to the gut. I don't know who in the world thought that doing this show would be a good idea. And I can't fathom how some people like this. Read the book people and you'll see my point. My advice to everyone is beware this show, DO NOT watch it. This show gets an F-.

This is a really great twist on the story. My family and I (3 girls, 4 boys and myself) find it a nice overlapping of values and virtues for families. The characters are well rounded and interesting. Atreyu and Bastian are really good "copies" of each other in their own worlds. It is nice to see the tie-ins from world to world and the storyline stays very straight- there's no confusion as to what is going on.The child-like empress was a very good choice for this story. Her sister, Xayide, is all that the child-like empress is not: hateful, greedy, vain, evil, etc. This is a great adventure!