PETER PAN AND WENDY - Mark Reviews Movies

Peter Pan and Wendy, Disney+

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 28, 2023

From the start of Peter Pan and Wendy, co-writer/director David Lowery's adaptation of the J.M. Barrie book and the 1953 Disney film also sets itself up to be a reflection on those stories. Like in the animated film, the tales of Peter Pan exist in the real world, so it is quite the shock for a trio of kids when the impish boy who refuses to grow up arrives in their bedroom one night.

Lowery rightly expects, just as the kids have a broad idea of what adventures Peter has experienced, that we know what will happen here, so he rushes through the setup to bring this tale to Neverland as soon as possible. That leaves us with an immediate question: What else is going to be different about Lowery and co-screenwriter Toby Halbrooks' live-action version of this story?

A good amount is different in this adaptation, mainly in terms of the mood with which Lowery approaches the material. Everything is fairly dreary and somber, even in those opening scenes of Wendy (Ever Anderson) and her two younger brothers, John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe), learning that one of their favorite bedtime stories is real. There's the anticipated commotion of Peter (Alexander Molony), who has come to take the children to his fantastical home, trying to catch his disconnected shadow, as well as the usual bit with the fairy Tinker Bell (Yara Shahidi) sprinkling the kids with magical dust so they can fly by thinking happy thoughts.

We know all of this. The key distinctions here are ones of atmosphere, mainly that everything in this London home and neighborhood in the early 20th century is so dim, while Wendy is rather distraught about having to leave for boarding school the next morning.

There's an air of melancholy that hangs over all of this, even as the kids zoom through London, fly through Big Ben, and experience time slowing down before arriving in Neverland, a lonely island in the middle of a vast ocean. The music score, taken from one of the animated film's songs, tells us otherwise, and maybe that's one of the concessions Lowery had to make in order to attempt what he does with the rest of this adaptation.

To be clear, this is mostly the Peter Pan story many will know from one of the Barrie works, the Disney animation, or through cultural osmosis, but it looks and feels much darker than the animated film from which it's taking most of its cues. Take the pirates, who are very silly villains in the previous adaptation but are only slightly silly here.

It's rather sinister when they capture John and Michael, as well as the younger boy's stuffed bear, and chain them all to a rock in a cove, having removed some skeletons that had been bound there, so that the tide can come in and drown them. Peter, Tiger Lily (Alyssa Wapanatâhk), and the Lost Boys—not all boys in this one (One of the group's single-word response to a doubt about that is the right answer—save the day. They're helped by a giant crocodile, which is designed to look a bit goofy but with jaws that make ugly work—all of it implied—of some of the pirates.

The whole of the movie feels caught in between wanting to be something grimmer, as well as more mature, and, apparently, needing to be familiar, as well as safe. The plot eventually takes on the simple adventure scheme we know, as Peter and Wendy and all their cohorts battle the pirates in an admittedly inventive sequence that sends a ship upwards and has it doing all sorts of turns and flips. After the setup and before the climax, though, things become quite quiet and introspective about the folly and cruelty of Peter's desire to never grow up.

This is the least eventful section of the movie, obviously, but it's the most fascinating and daring one, too. The hook of it (pun somewhat intended) revolves around the tale's famously diabolical villain. That's Captain Hook, of course, played with subdued relish by Jude Law in a performance that suggests a well of sadness beneath his child-hating attitude.

Normally, Peter and Hook know each other from their previous fights, such as the one during which the boy cut off the pirate's hand, but this movie introduces the notion of a relationship that goes back much further. What that says about Peter, along with his insistence that things stay as they are and as he likes them, and how it makes us reconsider the dastardly Hook are compelling ideas. They're certainly ones worth exploring, although it's clear that the filmmakers hit a wall, either of their own making or of studio requirements, as soon as the third act brings this material back to the basics.

Lowery's adaptation of this classic story brings with it some clever ideas, making it somewhat distinct among the re-workings of Disney animated features. The changes within Peter Pan and Wendy, though, remain either superficial, in terms of look and tone, or, when it comes to the radical shifts in perspectives about these characters, entirely beneath the surface of a too-familiar narrative.

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