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Third time I’ve seen this movie and it looks like it’s going to get better with every viewing. I got completely swept away this time. Just three or four minutes in I found myself saying to myself, “wow I am really going to like this this time,” and I wasn’t wrong. Again I couldn’t help but wonder what it’d be like to see in a cinema with a big enthusiastic kid-filled audience. Even the “I do believe in fairies,” chant sequence had my heart leaping.
One of the things I didn’t like the first time I saw the movie was how much it “borrowed” from previous incarnations of the story. This time, though, I saw a director who wasn’t afraid of simply doing the stuff that’s been proven to work, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” style – originality be damned. The main scene that stands out to me is as Olivia Williams looks at the children’s empty beds, then again after they’ve returned, still not seeing them ‘cos she’s imagined them so often in her sleep. I have to admit, I haven’t read the book (or if I have, I’ve forgotten it), so I don’t know if this whole scene appears there, I’m guessing it is, but it’s still visually very similar to the same scene in Steven Spielberg’s Hook. But, y’know, it still sort of brings tears to my eyes, so no harm done I guess.
3rd May 2004:
I made the mistake with this movie the first time round of expecting both too much and something different. It’s by no means the worst movie of 2003 as I originally thought. But it’s still a pale comparison to the Disney version and Spielberg’s Hook. In fact, you could say, this is the Kill Bill of “Peter Pan” movies, a cobbling together of the various ideas that exist in movies, cartoons and TV series, adding the authentic feel of the original novel, punching in a pop theme tune and adding a few Harry Potter rejects.
For kids, it is perhaps so far the best movie ever… personally I’d put it low down in my favourite children’s movies ever, but it’s certainly up there because I’m convinced it would be a riot to see with a kid-filled audience, and I don’t say that often, only Disney’s Mulan have I been able to watch and enjoy with noisy excitable children. The new Peter Pan moves too fast for me… there’s such exquisite set-design, but no time at all to take it in, and such deep emotions, but no time given to them either… I’m sure this is my personal problem with it. Take the mermaids for example. They’re the most perfect mermaids I’ve ever seen in a movie, but you actually see more of them in the equally paltry glimpses on the DVD extra featurette. They’re beautiful at first glance, then almost repulsive, but yet they’re so exotic, it’s that old-time draw of evil thing that “real” psirens are all about. But it’s like a one minute scene. In fact, all the “Peter Pan” movies so far, and by that I mean Disney, Spielberg, and this, since I haven’t seen others, have really skimped on the mermaids. I remember the TV series “Peter Pan and the Pirates” had a whole episode where the mermaids tried to turn Wendy into one of them, can’t wait for that to turn up on DVD since I have such a vivid memory of it. But enough of my mermaid obsession…
There are enough fairly great moments to make a movie out of here, but like all the movies I’ve ever hated at first view, this one always shoots itself in the foot too soon after winning me over. The “I do believe in fairies,” scene is the ultimate case in point. The music is perfect, the dark moment and photography are perfect, the acting is even perfect, but WHY did the film makers choose to align the words, “I do believe in fairies, I do! I do!” to a rhythm akin to a football chant? It just goes on like one too many repetitions for me.
Then there’s the scenes that too closely resemble the movies that preceded it. These are powerful scenes (eg, mother wakes up and thinks she sees the children in their beds, but “she saw them so often in her sleep that she thought it was just another dream,”) but the almost total similarity to previous versions is far too much of a distraction.
But not everybody has seen Hook with it’s better score and the Disney version with its better songs and character designs… and plenty of young girls are going to swoon over Jeremy Sumpter, and plenty of older girls are going to continue to swoon over Jeremy Isaacs… and plenty of young boys, for that matter are going to… over the (I confess, and apologise for my comments last review) emerging beauty Rachel Hurd-Wood (I just didn’t appreciate till now that they’d cast a girl so perfectly perched on the borderline between girl and woman – those lips put me off too much, ugh…).
In short, it’s a particularly targeted film, and if you watch it either at the right time or with the right people, you might really get the intention.