Review: Pan

We grew up with Disney’s animated classic Peter Pan, the heartwarming performance of the late, great Robin Williams in Hook, and Johnny Depp’s turn as creator J.M. Barrie in the tearjerker, Finding Neverland. Joe Wright’s Pan follows in the footsteps of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful (a pointless fantasy-adventure prequel that takes a children’s tale we know and love and hacks it to pieces). With a generic ‘prophecy’ premise and tedious action sequences, Pan is a little more than a CGI-fest that attempts to please everyone and actually pleases no one. It is more ‘second star to the right and straight on ’til boring’—and no amount of colourful costumes and fairy dust can get it off its ground.

Pan follows Peter—a spirited young boy with an inconsistent mockney accent—and his childhood in a World War Two-era London orphanage after being left by his mother as a baby. Peter and a group of his fellow orphans are kidnapped by pirates and whisked off to Neverland on an airborne ship, at the order of Captain Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman)—a tyrant who recruits child slaves to mine pixie dust or ‘pixim’, the substance that preserves his youth. Peter and new pal James Hook (Garrett Hedlund) escape the mine and set off on a journey to find Peter’s mother and defeat Blackbeard with the help of the natives and their princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara). It is later revealed that Peter is destined to be Neverland’s saviour, ‘the chosen one’—a boy with the ability to fly as son of a fairy prince and warrior mother, Mary—yes, a painfully obvious biblical reference.

Pan attempts its own ‘original’ take on Peter Pan, courtesy of writer Jason Fuchs, which would be all well and good if the plot didn’t plod-along, making use of bland dialogue and cheap laughs that wouldn’t excite even the most easily amused child. Wright’s visual interpretation of Neverland is wacky but ultimately underwhelming, and besides the familiar characters and the odd reference to crocodiles and ticking clocks, Pan ultimately fails to capture the essence of Barrie’s masterpiece.

Upon entering Neverland, the hoard of slaves become a mosh pit—singing and fist pumping to Nirvana’s ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’—a scenario that sets the silly tone for the rest of the film as it is—a) completely incongruous for the time period, and b) simply an excuse for Jackman to break into song again. It would have been interesting to see the basis of Peter and Hook’s legendary feud play out in this film but the two are, bizarrely, thick-as-thieves from beginning to end. Indeed, Peter’s abandonment angst—exploring a darker side of adolescence and resulting in his leadership of the infamous lost boys—is neatly tied up in Pan’s saccharine ending. Also, the forced romance between Hook and Tiger Lily threatens to taint the original text altogether in its sheer ridiculousness.

Captain Hook—the sinister, haughty and lovably camp pirate icon—once played brilliantly by Dustin Hoffman, is turned into a grinning young rogue with a corny cowboy accent by Hedlund. Jackman’s Blackbeard is also a one-dimensional pantomime villain, who simply changes the pitch of his bellowing to keep the character interesting. Adeel Akhtar’s performance as the crafty sidekick Sam ‘Smee’ Smiegel provides the only forgivable comic moments—one that really is clutching at straws. And Mara’s Tiger Lily is decidedly vanilla, despite her vibrant native garb. As for Cara Delevingne, her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it part(s) as part of a group of silent, digitally-enhanced mermaids adds nothing to the film besides another big name to lure audiences into cinemas.

Peter’s flight in the final showdown with Blackbeard is supposed to be the ultimate moment of triumph for our boy-wonder; instead, audiences will be praying for the credits to roll and the 90s nostalgia of Robin Williams. Fans of Peter Pan should steer clear of this film—unless they want to see a beloved childhood tale veritably fed to the crocodiles.

1/5