All the ingredients needed to make “Peter Pan & Wendy” a fun, swashbuckling adventure are present, but it fails to fully come across. Perhaps that is due to how often this story has been adapted for the screen. At a certain point, a level of creativity is needed to make it stand out from the rest, and this adaptation lacks that.
What makes Neverland so different from London, England? Where is the sense of wonder — the child’s paradise that exists for the imagination to run wild? Neverland here is nothing more than a series of sprawling cliffs, a haunting cave and a semi-impressive treehouse hideaway. Serviceable to the idea of Neverland, but the film fails to truly evoke any wonder or magic Neverland is meant to have. The VFX is not terrible – contrary to the early stills provided, the movie isn’t a completely dull CGI sludge fest of grays. Occasionally, Tinker Bell’s face (Yara Shahidi) may slide into the uncanny valley territory, but the visuals for the rest of the movie are fine.
As the title of the movie suggests, this adaptation places a greater focus on Wendy than the original story did. Wendy is a young girl on the verge of growing up but is reluctant to leave behind her childhood, worried that becoming an adult means she will never have fun again. There is a brief speech Wendy’s mother gives her at the beginning of the movie about the need of being a good role model for her brothers, placing a set of expectations on her that will ring familiar to any eldest child watching this movie. Wendy’s bond with her brother is brought up a couple of times, but never fully explored. This means we don’t get to see the full extent of how this pressure of being the oldest affects her, and it hinders her development as a character. It does not help that John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe) each have so little personality that they are more or less interchangeable.
Peter Pan (Alexander Molony) and his grungy set of Lost Boys have the same childish bravado and charm that made them so loveable across countless adaptations. Between all its members, the little tribe of the Lost Boys has enough zany one-liners to provide a comedic element to the rest of the movie. Peter Pan is trying his best, but he never quite feels like a protagonist of his own on Wendy’s level, despite being one-half of the movie’s title.
But easily the best part of this movie is Jude Law’s Captain Hook. He’s humorous but still menacing enough that he can feel like a genuine threat. Throughout all the various increasingly dire situations Hook finds himself in his vain quest to vanquish Peter Pan once and for all, Law manages to navigate it with a particular aplomb that will make him this movie’s saving grace and is perhaps the sole thing that will make the movie not a half-bad way to spend a rainy day.
Verdict: Aside from Jude Law’s performance, “Peter Pan & Wendy” has nothing that elevates it to the true level of imagination and escapism Disney movies of the past have managed to evoke. It is, however, still a fun way to spend 90 minutes of your day.
