Peter Pan & Wendy (2023)

Score: 2 / 5

I've preached elsewhere about how it has become cool to complain and hate on large franchises, we'll not retread that territory here. A hot topic, perennially now, is the live-action remakes of Disney classics. Generally, the ones that seem to land best with audiences are either ones that faithfully recreate the original with a few notable moments to deepen or intensify the material for a contemporary audience or ones that radically shift the material into new territory. Think of Beauty and the Beast or The Little Mermaid for the former, which are largely copies of the original but include a few new songs and scenes to add weight to the characters and highlight secondary themes. For the latter, what better example than David Lowery's fabulously inventive reimagining of Pete's Dragon, which is almost entirely original material.

David Lowery's oeuvre tends toward mythmaking in a practical, grounded way, crafting folktales that are spiritual and tactile and as haunting as heroic. I was excited, then, to see what he'd do with a retelling of Disney's 1950 Peter Pan, interestingly titled this time with an inclusion of Wendy. The countless adaptations of J.M. Barrie's original play span far and wide, each attempting to find its own insightful or earnest purpose. It's a tricky venture, though, as we've seen from the catastrophic failure of Joe Wright's Pan and the lasting love of Steven Spielberg's Hook, which are only two notable examples. Do we focus more on Barrie's signature wordplay and wit, or do we focus on spectacle and magic? Do we examine childhood wonder using class or gender as a lens, or do we unleash rapid-fire action to awe the children in the audience? Every artist will do something different. I just wish Lowery made a choice to do something.

Mostly a retelling of Disney's animated feature, Lowery (also working as co-writer) here cuts the familiar songs and relegates that music to the score, which is mostly overbearing. Lowery also cuts familiar dialogue, replacing it with language that rarely feels inspired by Barrie and often trips over itself. The scene at Skull Rock is a prime example, when the pirates are at once a little too threatening and a little too stupid to have much impact either way. The screenplay works especially hard around the character of Captain Hook, who is given a dubious backstory and lots of time to feel grumpy and forlorn; audience's mileage will vary on this -- Jude Law himself feels a bit unsure about what he's doing in the role -- but for me, the attempt to infantilize with Hook did not work. Conversely, Tiger Lily as a warrior princess who speaks authentic Cree is a welcome reimagining.

Apart from these elements, everything else in the film is more of a mishmash, a lukewarm mess that never feels as engaging or fun as it should. A wonderfully diverse group of Lost Boys includes some girls, which is cute until it renders their collective name useless; it's this kind of thing that will make people roll their eyes about inclusivity, because it doesn't make sense within the logic of the world presented to us. Tinker Bell is here played by a woman of color, which is nice, but her name isn't explained (which is maybe good, as it might make us view her as a Black fairy maid); further, she seems to be the boss of Peter, who defers to her repeatedly, and yet is stripped of her voice. She's also much more complex than she should be, in terms of Barrie's insistence that fairies aren't big enough for multiple emotions at once.

Technically, the film is gorgeous to view. Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli and the designers craft a stunningly beautiful Neverland that will make you want to pause and relish. The CGI is thick here, made more off-putting by frenetic editing, but when the visuals land, they stick that landing, even with a giant man-eating crocodile. I was annoyed more than once about the scenes shot in the dark, though, as even with a calibrated TV it was nearly impossible to discern what was happening in these sequences. The intense fight during the climax, which also hammers home its attempt to make us sympathize with Hook, made me a bit nauseated, but also looks dreamy, like a watercolor painting on a book jacket.

The banal moral of this movie seems to be that everyone misses their mothers. The moral of my review is that Peter Pan & Wendy is a heartbreakingly wasted opportunity. I suspect Lowery's hands were tied by the studio, because this is simply not up to his usual standard. We deserved a surreal but realistic adventure, one rooted in environmentalism and the magic of myth and storytelling and wishing for what is ultimately fleeting. Frankly, if you're interested at all in this movie, you should skip it and watch instead Benh Zeitlin's Wendy, which is in every way the kind of movie Lowery usually makes and does exactly what I, for one, wanted from Disney's remake.