Disney’s ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ doesn’t have liftoff
MOVIE REVIEW
“Peter Pan & Wendy”
Rated PG. On Disney+
Grade: C+
We’ve seen so many Peter Pan movies that we’ve lost count of them and their Peters, Wendys, Tinker Bells and Captain Hooks. Some of us are still recovering from Joe Wright’s career-crashing 2015 flop “Pan.” Then there was Benh Zeitlin’s 2020 mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma “Wendy.” I could go on.
J.M. Barrie’s character Peter Pan first appeared in his 1902 novel “The Little White Bird” and then became the lead in Barrie’s 1904 hit stage play “Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.” Hook is often the meatier part in the many adaptations because the actor playing him gets to wave his sword and his hook around and do his best pirate impression. This is why Dustin Hoffman was able to steal the abysmal “Hook” (1991) from Robin Williams (petty theft). I wish I had seen Boris Karloff’s singing Captain Hook in the 1950 Broadway musical. This new “Peter Pan & Wendy” features yet another scene-stealing Hook played by Jude Law, who has blossomed nicely in middle age.
Directed and co-written by critic’s darling David Lowery, auteur of over-praised 2021 effort “The Green Knight” and the frankly ridiculous 2017 art house hit “A Ghost Story,” this new Disney Peter Pan film is just plain dull. In this version, we meet the Darling family, mother (Molly Parker), father (Alan Tudyk), daughter Wendy (Ever Anderson) and sons John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe) on the emotional eve of Wendy’s departure for boarding school. I must say I found the wallpaper more interesting than the wooden sword-fighting between John and Michael or Wendy’s petulant dismissal of “growing up.”
While asleep, Wendy is visited by a certain fairy named Tinker Bell (Yara Shahidi, TV’s “Black-ish”), who scatters pixie dust over her and her brothers. Peter Pan (London-born theater actor Alexander Molony) makes his entrance. After helping Peter to retrieve his fugitive shadow, Wendy and her brothers are then transported to mythical Neverland, where they meet Peter’s Lost Boys (and Girls) and Neverland’s indigenous people, including real-life princess Tiger Lilly (Alyssa Wapanatahk). The film, which was shot in a spectacular-looking Newfoundland, splits its action between rocky cliffs and dark tunnels and the Atlantic Ocean and Hook’s ship The Jolly Roger with its pirates suspiciously similar to the ones in Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. In one scene, Hook forces his boatswain Mr. Smee (Jim Gaffigan), whose name has a Dickensian ring, to recite the rules of conduct while aboard the ship. Rule number 39 or so is: No clocks.
Apparently, primitive record players are allowed, and it turns out this film’s Hook is a Gilbert & Sullivan fan. Hook captures Michael and John and has them in chains in the caves, waiting for the high tide to come and drown them. In the nick of time, Peter and Tinker Bell save them.
Rinse and repeat appears to be the writers’ strategy (the co-writer is Lowery regular Toby Halbrooks). A Godzilla-sized crocodile appears to wreak havoc and then disappear. Peter Pan and Hook have a dull back story. Anderson has plenty to do. But Wendy’s character does not develop, and her Wendy and Molony’s Peter lack chemistry. In fact, this film’s Peter Pan lacks exuberance, which is like Peter without the Pan. Lowery manages to pinch an image from Terry Gilliam’s enchanting 1981 cult favorite “Time Bandits.” But on the whole, to paraphrase a line, “Peter Pan & Wendy” is a big dilly-dally.
(“Peter Pan & Wendy” contains violence and dangerous action)
