Peter Pan & Wendy
review by Bobby Blakey
Throughout the years there have been numerous takes on J.M. Barrie novel The Boy Who Could Fly or more commonly known as Peter Pan. One of the most popular is the 1953 animated Disney classic that is now getting the live action reimaging from Pete’s Dragon and The Green Knight director David Lowery. The film features a great cast including Jude Law, Alexander Molony, Ever Anderson, Yara Shahidi, Alyssa Wapanatâhk, Joshua Pickering, Jacobi Jupe, Molly Parker, Alan Tudyk, and Jim Gaffigan. Could this new take capture the magic of the source material or will it run out of time?
Peter Pan & Wendy follows Wendy Darling, a young girl afraid to leave her childhood home behind, who meets Peter Pan, a boy who refuses to grow up. Alongside her brothers and a tiny fairy, Tinker Bell, she travels with Peter to the magical world of Neverland. There, she encounters an evil pirate captain, Captain Hook, and embarks on a thrilling and dangerous adventure that will change her life forever.
I know a lot of people are down on Disney with this new trend of doing live action adaptations of their animated works. I for one am fine with it and if they work great, if they don’t you can still enjoy the original animated version. Peter Pan is different in my opinion just for the amount of takes that have been done over the years and it is one of the few that I think does well in this format. I am not a huge Pan fan, but still enjoy the original Disney take.
I am sure there will be plenty hardcore fans that have issues with elements here, but I have to admit I had a good time with it. Most of it I am sure was thanks to Jude Law’s fun performance as Captain Hook steals the show. The rest of the cast were fine, but it’s really his performance that pulled it altogether for me. I probably dislike the Tinker Bell character in general more than any in this story in any form, but I kind of dug how Yara Shahidi
played it. Alexander Molony was fine as Pan, but there was just something missing for me that always felt off. I felt that way about all the Lost Boys and not in a bad way or bad performance, just didn’t feel any connection to them or each other like I would expect.
It does offer up all the swashbuckling fun that you expect from this story and it’s well-executed and delivers. I really dug how all these elements were handled and the over the top size crocodile that really stands out as it should. The over the top fun and adventure really made this new take on the classic story work more than it probably should have, but I enjoyed it.
Decide for yourself and check out Peter Pan & Wendy streaming now on Disney+.
