Come Away (2020)

 Score: 2 / 5

In an idyllic British forest, a beautifully multiracial family live their best lives. Children David, Peter, and Alice romp through the greenery playing fantastic games with tea parties and pirates. We experience much of it through their eyes, such as when a washed-up boat on a secluded river suddenly unloads its piratic passengers, and when the children's twigs become rapiers to defend them. It's all sweet and charming, the sort of fantasy we've seen in Finding Neverland and others of its sickly sentimental ilk, but warm for two main reasons: an immediately likable cast and references to common cultural fantasies. Here, the references are overtly to Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. It's very cute.

And then, in a tragic accident (that I didn't even realize was happening until later, no doubt a result of a pathetically PG rating), David suddenly dies. Alice and Peter, while trying to make sense of the tragedy themselves, see their parents struggling with addictive and destructive behaviors as a result. The brother and sister work together to help their family as the metaphorical wolves close in, launching on an adventure to improve their circumstances. I confess to being utterly unclear about exactly what the children are up to, and they come and go from the house with some regularity, indicating that they are not far away. While their parents stew in a miasma of sorrow and perhaps guilt -- their father's gambling addiction and increased debts bring violent men seeking payment, while their mother drinks dubious liquids from little bottles around the house -- the children run to seedy city dens where shadowy, threatening figures leer from the darkness and other children gang up in dank alleyways.

Director Brenda Chapman is no stranger to fantasy filmmaking, as she was a writer on animated Disney classics like Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Lion King, in addition to directing Disney/Pixar's Brave and DreamWorks's The Prince of Egypt. But this, her first live-action feature, tries to combine fantasy with drama in forced yet vague ways. Generally, I'd say this movie is a coming-of-age story about children who use fantasy to cope with their troubles. In the best examples of the genre, it's not unlike Pan's Labyrinth or A Monster Calls. Harsh reality provides room for magic and horror that creeps into our awareness of the world around us, teaching us about ourselves through the prism of the impossible. That's what the storytelling tradition began as; Homer used it for history and the Brothers Grimm had their morality tales.

But Come Away is certainly not the most polished of its ilk. I'd liken it closer to Bridge to Terabithia in its awkward handling of the boundaries between realism and fantasy. Both works feature starry casts; here, Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo lead, supported by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Caine, and Derek Jacobi. Both work to understand the death of a young person, but ultimately don't come to much of a conclusion. Perhaps there ultimately isn't one that could fit in a family-friendly movie, if there is ever a way to understand or rationalize the death of a young person. Also in both, the fantasy elements are less logical and more emotionally felt. Come Away, however, has the particular problem that its references are to such popular and often-retold stories. Barrie and Carroll are too recognizable to be toyed with in this thin, inconsequential manner. Even when "Captain James" or a spookily unbalanced "Hatter" show up, we're not sure what's real and what's in the children's minds, and we often can't figure out exactly what the reference is meant to mean for the unfolding drama.

By the end, which seems to marry the stories of both Peter Pan and Alice, I even wondered if this strange mixture of the two was meant to be a first step into another, larger thing. As a grown-up Alice reflects on her life and coming to terms with maturity (pointedly noting that her imagination is the only thing she carries with her now), I couldn't help but feel that, had this movie been successful, it might have led to other ill-imagined mash-ups of classic characters in undercooked origin stories. But let's hope that doesn't happen for multiple reasons. First, I don't want to see Hansel and Gretel and Cinderella teaming up to fight off abusive parents or Dorothy and Pinocchio ganging up against their bullies (if it's not Into the Woods or Once Upon a Time, it can sod right off). Second, this movie comes dangerously close to abusing the children it purports to support; when little Alice takes a big ol' swig from her mother's "Drink Me" bottle of booze, which is totally in-line with the trippy source material, I couldn't help but worry about any children actually watching this movie. I cringed like I did in Radio Flyer, and that's just not a good thing.