So I watched a film from all the way back in 2003 -Peter Pan, the latest one.
I have to say, I realize I’m not exactly the film’s target audience but I was bored and had to watch something.
The story as a whole seems to be fairly faithful -as much as you’d expect it to be –to the actual story. It, at times, holds visual similarities to the Disney cartoon version –replicating certain shots in a few places. I refer to the scene in which Pan imitates Hook’s own voice.
The film, however, is full of rather noticeable and distracting faults –at least to an adult viewer. The first thing that comes to mind is the strange cartoon-like appearance of the exterior scenes, In Victorian city and Never Never Land. This has obviously been a conscious decision by the film makers to give the film its own style. Yet, I can’t help but feeling it just looks rather tacky.
On the subject of style , I was most disappointed when Pan takes the children into a ridiculously over-cartooned/graphic space to get to the second star to the right. Now we all know that stars are out in space, but when we think of “the second star to the right and straight on till morning” I don’t believe many of us picture Peter Pan, Wendy and the Boys actually flying in outer space to get there. Yet, that’s what they do in this film –and a very warped and strange version of space they travel in too. This I was not a fan of, simpler is better in my opinion.
The character of Peter Pan also happens to be the only one with an American accent in the entire film, despite claiming to have been originally from Victorian England in the film. Got to make Pan American no matter what I guess.
Having said this, I’m not against an American Peter Pan, after all, He was American in ‘Hook’ and I consider that film to be top quality entertainment -for children and Adults. In the case of ‘Hook’, however, the filmmakers have managed to explain his accent in a completely reasonable explanation. In this new version of Peter Pan….He is just American and that’s that -Unexplained.
Dialogue as a whole is also rather poor, vague and just not very good. It seems to try too hard to sound poetic and lyrical and so sometimes winds up leaving a rather vague and uncertain expression of what the character are actually wanting, asking etc. Just keep it simple stupid! A perfect example of this is when Wendy questions Peter about how he feels about love. Pan ultimately falls out with Wendy and flies off in a mood with her. But the dialogue in the scene is so disjointed, strange and ‘lyrical’ that I found myself sitting unsure as to why exactly Pan had strangely and suddenly flown away, angry at Wendy. I think they should have revaluated how they wrote their dialogue.
The film opens and gets into it pretty quickly. There is not much setting up of Pan’s character or Wendy’s, very little on her brothers but quite a bit on their father and the Dog ‘Nanny’. Perhaps they assumed that everyone is already familiar with the character of Peter Pan, but they should still set him up/introduce him in a fitting way. All the characters in the film, I found extremely hard to get involved with. I just didn’t seem to care what happened to them in the story –which is a shame, considering the quality and reputation of the original story.
Yet another thing I took issue with in this version of Peter Pan was the believability of it. It may seem like a strange thing to be concerned about in a children’s’ film but it all add to the quality of the picture. For instance, there occurs the moment when Wendy meets Peter for the first time in her room. She appears to think nothing of a flying stranger in her bedroom, and simply accepts it after a few seconds. Then there’s the scene in which Hook is ‘eaten’ by the giant crock,…..and appears well and healthy a few scenes later. A completely baffling and unexplained moment is one in which every single person in the film begins to proclaim that they “ do believe in fairies!” , presumably to save Tinkerbell. But why the characters back in the Victorian world begin to chant and proclaim this unexplained statement is a complete mystery to me. Perhaps it was intended to be a motivational moment.
The only good points I found in the film were at best minimal and trivial in the grand scheme of the movie. The image of the Pirate ship stuck in an Ice sheet was an extremely fascinating visual –although, one that does not survive very long. The performances of Jason Isaacs as Hook and Richard Briers as Smee are the most entertaining aspect of the entire feature. Yet, even this is in reality just good actors doing what they can with a bad script.
If I look at the film as a whole, I do not believe that this film flows well at all. You don’t get a good sense of much narrative clarity at all.
Just a children’s film maybe –but it was all I had in the house to watch and it should’ve delivered at least an average level of quality entertainment. Perhaps just watching Pirates and lost boys prancing about for a few hours is enough to keep the children target audience entertained –but surely not their parents. And in my opinion there are far better children’s’ films that are enjoyable for adults also……For example Steven Spielberg’s ‘Hook’.
P.S. Don’t make Captain James Hook fly!!
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