Mark Reviews Movies: WENDY

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | March 6, 2020

Co-writer/director Benh Zeitlin tries to inject some realism into the inherently fantastical story of Peter Pan. Throughout Wendy, one just keeps wondering why anyone would think that's a good idea.

The trip to Neverland doesn't involve flying, because people can't fly, obviously, so the journey is by means of a train and a rowboat. Neverland itself is still an island in an unknown part of the middle of the ocean (which just raises questions of how a few kids have the strength and stamina to row that distance), although this one—at least at first—seems to have been formed by an active volcano (more on that in a bit). There are no fairies or mermaids or pirates to be found here, because such things might take us away from the realist side of the story.

Zeitlin begins this movie with a sturdy dedication to that sense of realism. The tale, set in a more modern but unspecified period of time, starts in a diner by some train tracks.

It's a boy's birthday, and all of the adults joke about how he'll mopping the floors of this place when he gets older. The boy rebels against the idea and runs out of the restaurant. Standing on the tracks, banging his pants against the ground in a temper tantrum, he notices a figure running across the top of a passing train and follows it. Years later, the boy's face is plastered on missing poster in the diner, because that's how the real world would react if a kid disappeared to a mysterious fantasy realm.

As for the setup to the story, as we remember it from J.M. Barrie's original play and its countless adaptations, it remains essentially the same. Wendy Darling (Devin France) and her two brothers, twins James and Douglas (Gavin and Gage Naquin), wake up one night to a sound from outside their bedroom window. The shadow of a boy appears in the room.

Wendy, skittish about growing up after her mother (played by Shay Walker) tells the kids how her youthful dreams have been replaced by adult concerns, decides to investigate. She and her brothers hop on top a passing train, and there, they meet Peter (Yashua Mack). He'll take them to a place where they'll never grow up.

This is basically where the movie loses its way. Neverland is real. The ageless nature of the children of the island is real, and so, too, is the fact of rapid aging for any child who doubts the magic, feels sad for too long, or decides they want to grow up. The kids are apparently able to control the steam geysers erupting from the island, because those geysers aren't from a volcano. They're from a whale-like creature that lives beneath the island. It, which all the kids call "the Mother," is the source of the island's magic or something like that.

The problem should be clear. Zeitlin, who co-wrote the screenplay with his sister Eliza, simply picks and chooses, with no rhyme or reason, what's real and what's fantasy about this version of the story. It's real only when the filmmakers want it to be, and it's fantastical when they need it to be.

The primary issues is that this particular story—about children who don't age (regardless of whether or not they can fly) and who become instantly old when they stop believing and whose magical agelessness is controlled by a glowing sea creature—is pure fantasy. Putting it into the realm of realism is superficially intriguing, but the move is also pointless (because it will quickly and decisively veer from any kind of realism at a certain point in the tale) and raises far too many questions (which Zeitlin suggests with that poster of the missing boy and then completely dismisses).

Zeitlin is so hesitant to embrace the intrinsic magic and fantasy of his source material that the resulting story is aimless and formless. There are no adventures to be had—only kids playing, while Wendy contemplates aging and explains vague rules via narration. There are no thoughts about childhood and growing up beyond the obvious ones—that we wish to remain young, that such a wish is impossible, that there's magic to be discovered in becoming an adult. The tone is at best static (because the story is so repetitive) and at worst inconsistent (Don't ask how and why Captain Hook comes into this version, because it's a bloody mess).

Wendy is a movie founded upon a shallow idea that never evolves. It isn't a very good idea, either.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products

Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)