Peter Pan and Wendy movie review – Young Wendy Darling, who wants to avoid going to boarding school, meets Peter Pan, a boy who won’t get older. Peter takes Wendy, her boys, and Tinker Bell to the enchanted kingdom of Neverland, where she meets a villainous pirate captain.
Movie Details:
Cast: Ever Anderson, Joshua Pickering, Jacobi Jupe, and Alexander Molony.
Director: David Lowery
Where to watch?: Disney+ Hotstar
Adapted from: Peter Pan, Peter and Wendy
Cinematography: Bojan Bazelli
Music by: Daniel Hart
Rating: 3/5 stars
Peter Pan and Wendy movie review:
The biggest offender of them all, Disney, has now managed to deliver the exact opposite of that, at a time when studios are willing to spend hundreds of millions on commissioning, producing, and marketing algorithmically-driven pieces of content that even its own stars would hesitate to describe as cinema. Peter Pan & Wendy is here to present a vision of an alternate reality where, in addition to releasing traditional films in theatres, studios devote talent and resources to producing more subversive material specifically for the internet. This comes just one week after Apple’s Ghosted brought the streaming industry to new lows.
Peter Pan & Wendy isn’t particularly subversive, but given the films we have to watch on a weekly basis, it’s comparable to Dibakar Banerjee accepting Yash Raj funding and producing underappreciated masterpieces like Detective Byomkesh Bakshy and Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar. Naturally, all of this is presuming that it wasn’t an error and that Disney knew what it was getting into when it hired director David Lowery to work on one of its most well-known properties almost immediately after he had produced Pete’s Dragon, which is still the studio’s best live-action remake to this day.
Storyline:
Although Peter Pan & Wendy isn’t quite as good as that movie or lacks Christopher Robin’s profound melancholy (a Winnie the Pooh movie set in postwar London! ), it does solidify Lowery’s reputation as one of the most individualistic directors currently working in the studio system. In some way, every one of his films is a fairytale. Unexpectedly, two of them were about mediaeval knights trapped in the bodies of millennials and renegade outlaw couples in the Old West, respectively. Lowery’s films are renowned for their simple stories, which are frequently held in opposition to lush, painterly imagery.
This is arguably the simplest way, to sum up, Peter Pan & Wendy, in which the director reteams with Bojan Bazelli, the cinematographer from Pete’s Dragon, to produce a film experience that appears to be constantly at odds with its otherwise well-known plot. The process is well known: On the eve of starting boarding school, Wendy Darling and her two brothers are taken to the enchanted Neverland by their hero, Peter Pan, who knows that all they want is to stay children. They meet the nefarious Captain Hook and his crew of pirates, the intrepid Tiger Lily, and the ragged band of misfits known as the Lost Boys there.
Peter Pan & Wendy has a lot more personality than other films of its scale and breadth. Despite the fact that Daniel Hart’s score has a lot of Wizard of Oz references. Although it moves at a thoroughbred pace, perhaps to keep the younger audience engaged, Lowery patiently builds each scene and meticulously crafts each frame. Peter Pan & Wendy’s makes extensive use of real locales, a forgotten art these days, in contrast to most Disney films, which frequently appear to have been created inside of a warehouse or on a computer. The geography of the action is virtually constrained to a tiny radius around one island.
Screenplay:
It’s almost unfortunate that save from a few brief sequences, the film makes no attempt to depart from the original script, which has already undergone extensive adaptation. It definitely necessitates a radical rethinking. The Lost Males group’s inclusion of girls as well as males is one of Lowery’s major new choices. In order to quell any potential indignation, the film has Wendy acknowledge this herself before shrugging and saying, “Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.” But Lowery’s greatest contribution may be giving Captain Hook a tragic backstory, which at the very least gives Jude Law more to think about.
Strangely enough, Law doesn’t play the famous role in a comic or moustache-twirling villainous way. Instead, he opts to play it entirely straight; even Hook’s most threatening scenes are pitched. As if he’s placing an order at McDonald’s or something. This is an interesting choice. It’s compelling enough to get you to sit up and take notice of the performance. A welcome change from the scenery-chewing tone that most actors would pursue when given a role like this. Lowery is successful in making Captain Hook more relatable without necessarily humanising him.
The film is a shambles in most other areas. Without a doubt, it wasn’t necessary. In 2016, Lowery also directed the charming Pete’s Dragon remake. For which the company appeared to have given him complete creative control over the original. He took the not-so-classic tale of an orphan and his enormous dragon friend and transformed it into a picture of a small-town community. Settling into the atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest and letting the cuddly creature of the title exist in the margins, glimpsed in alluring snatches, as much local folklore as a real-life beast.
Final Verdict:
This director has a fantastic eye and is good with mood. (It is unfortunate that Peter Pan & Wendy’s expansive, wind-whipped Neverland panoramas will never be viewed on a big screen. As the movie is moving directly to Disney+.) One wonders if Lowery’s love of arresting images and meandering storytelling might have increased if he hadn’t had the pressure of a classic property pressing down on him. As it stands, Peter Pan & Wendy feels too cumbersome and insignificant to ever take off.
So, this was all about the honest Peter Pan and Wendy movie review. Click here to read the Dasara movie review.
