When I first saw the trailer for Peter Pan, I was excited, but I also wondered who the audience would be. The original story of Peter Pan is very much a puberty coming-of-age tale, but Disney successfully made it for much younger children. Would tweens and teens avoid the live action version because the story itself has been coopted as a Disney cartoon?
I hope not. This is a beautifully made film. There are spots where it's slow, and there's a general stiffness to it, especially by modern standards. It feels like an old film: Overacted, but in that stiff "Are we still on stage?" way that's common in movies before around 1950. I think this was the intent, but it does drag the movie in spots.
There's a good deal of sexual tension in the film (not just between Wendy and Peter); as a puberty coming-of-age tale, that's appropriate, but if that's something you're sensitive to your children seeing, definitely see it first before taking them. (Note to critics who insist the protagonists are too young: Standards have changed quite a bit over the last century, and this is an attempt to be true to the original story. Going even further back to Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was 13 in Shakespeare's original play, and she's getting married. Times change.)
The film isn't as scary as the trailer I'd seen; it wasn't much more intense than a Harry Potter film, and about as well made. The themes are more complicated than Harry Potter, though; I sense that even many adult viewers don't "get" why Mr. Darling and Captain Hook *must* be played by the same actor (Hook represents Wendy's anxieties about adulthood and the loss of dreams, embodied in the "real world" in Mr. Darling), and see it as an affectation.
4.5 out of 5 stars
I hope not. This is a beautifully made film. There are spots where it's slow, and there's a general stiffness to it, especially by modern standards. It feels like an old film: Overacted, but in that stiff "Are we still on stage?" way that's common in movies before around 1950. I think this was the intent, but it does drag the movie in spots.
There's a good deal of sexual tension in the film (not just between Wendy and Peter); as a puberty coming-of-age tale, that's appropriate, but if that's something you're sensitive to your children seeing, definitely see it first before taking them. (Note to critics who insist the protagonists are too young: Standards have changed quite a bit over the last century, and this is an attempt to be true to the original story. Going even further back to Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was 13 in Shakespeare's original play, and she's getting married. Times change.)
The film isn't as scary as the trailer I'd seen; it wasn't much more intense than a Harry Potter film, and about as well made. The themes are more complicated than Harry Potter, though; I sense that even many adult viewers don't "get" why Mr. Darling and Captain Hook *must* be played by the same actor (Hook represents Wendy's anxieties about adulthood and the loss of dreams, embodied in the "real world" in Mr. Darling), and see it as an affectation.
4.5 out of 5 stars