Growing up is such a barbarous business.

Peter Pan

(2003)

(SPOILERS) The advent of the latest, disastrous, iteration of JM Barrie’s classic had me wondering if the whole idea of translating the story to screen is doomed, and that Disney simply got lucky first time. So in dutifully investigating a few previous versions, I began with one I hadn’t caught before; PJ Hogan’s commendably faithful attempt, as much as Joe Wright’s is entirely disrespectful. Well, partially commendably. Perhaps a mid-ground between diligence to the original text and invention is the optimum path, as Hogan’s picture is admirable in many respects – and vastly superior to Wright’s – but still fails to quite distil magic.

Pan can take some comfort that this Peter was no more successful; some sources give it as being even more expensive (adjusting for inflation); $130m budget according to Wikipedia, while Box Office Mojo offers a more conservative $100m. Either way, that’s not peanuts. The outlay seems the more absurd given that Peter Pan conspires to follow the tradition of other live action adaptations, such that it looks highly artificial, limited and stage-bound for much of the time. The effects are very variable, ranging from the rather good (the crocodile) to the not so (London and Neverland look like advent calendar animations, such that one wonders if this was intentional). You’re left wondering where all the money went (some blame the art department eating up the budget and causing overruns).

One is also led to speculate whether Hogan, being Australian, has a natural affinity for ungainly slapstick, and if that’s common to his fellow nationals or just the ones with his surname. Probably not the latter, as there are points where this could have been directed by Baz Lurhmann, such is the frenetically whacky action (which, lacking comic timing, makes it mostly unfunny). Peter (Jeremy Sumpter), darting about after his shadow, or Tinkerbell (Ludivine Sagnier) flitting hither and thither and pulling exaggerated faces is more suggestive of Drop Dead Fred than a hallowed classic (Hogan wrote the screenplay with Michael Goldenberg, also credited with the adaption of Contact, the fourth Harry Potter and – ahem – Green Lantern).

But Peter Pan is also quite deferent to the source material, getting to grips with the highs and lows of a boy who refuses to grow up (“Will they send me to school. And then, to an office? Then I shall be a man”; succinctly put), the tragic side of that position, his strange oedipal longing for Wendy (he and the Lost Boys wish to adopt her as their mother, while they see him as their father; “Mother and father are fighting again”), and her consequent distress that he feels nothing for her.

The screenplay even lends Hook substance, a man whose greatest fear is loneliness and who is even able to commiserate with Wendy at one point (and she, indicative that she wants more than Peter is willing to offer, finds him entrancing) and plot with Tinkerbell.

Which rather shows up the picture’s biggest failing. It’s highly episodic, and often incidental, taking in escapes, captures, being entertained by Hook, and his attempt to poison Peter; all of them are accurate to Barrie’s sacred text but fail to finesse themselves into a picture with much momentum. There’s also the issue of serving stage play elements that don’t perhaps works so well on the big screen (all together now; “I do believe in fairies, I do, I do”). It’s a mistake to trust goodwill in the theatrical template, and the panto aspects of Peter Pan can’t necessarily be relied upon to win over little rascals in an alternate medium.

Such was their studiousness, Hogan and Goldenberg even shot an ultimately unused epilogue where Peter returns to Wendy. Peeved that she is now grown and married, he takes her daughter to Neverland as his new “mother”. What is included, in contrast to Wright, who blanched at the implications, is Tiger Lilly being an Indian, or a “savage”; Hogan is happy to go there. Probably, again, because he’s Australian, and insensitive to such things.

Wendy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) John (Harry Newell) and Michael (Freddie Popplewell) all provide creditable performances, the former particularly so (Hurd-Wood is the only one of the trio who has acted since). They’re all impossibly posh, another aspect Wright eschewed with his ragamuffin Peter. Who is here played by the very Californian (or Aryan, as you will) looking Jeremy Sumpter. His American twang gives the character a kind of inverse exoticism, I guess. Sumpter certainly handles the role better than Levi Miller would recently. Nevertheless, he still isn’t really able to lend much depth to the character. Hogan, for all his willingness to chart a course for the dark side, is too enamoured of the fizzy pop elements to abide there for long.

The adults mostly score solidly. Jason Isaacs cuts a better Hook than Darling. Indeed, as the former he comes on like a dishevelled ex-rock star, and one might think he’d been watching Johnny Depp had this not come out the same year as the first Pirates of the Caribbean. His Hook is mostly great fun, differentiated and worthy by being more dangerous and inelegant than Hoffman’s incarnation. The most memorable lines are his (“Growing up is such a barbarous business”, mocking Peter’s ephemerality in the eyes of others; “There is another in your place. He is called husband”), and as he opines that Pan will “die alone and unloved, just like me”, you almost feel sympathy for the brute. As Darling, a man who has put his dreams away in a drawer, to sacrifice them for his family, he’s more successful as the repressed man than the one who rediscovers himself in the final scene.

Richard Briers makes a genial fist of things as an elderly Smee, even breaking the fourth wall at one point (“Very exciting, two dead already”). Olivia Williams, and particularly Lynn Redgrave (as a specially created character, Aunt Millicent) are affecting, while Saffron Burrows’ narration is perfectly pitched. But, while this a well-intentioned adaptation, and it’s unlikely the planned Disney live-action retake will be anywhere near as observant of the finer details, Hogan lacks the vision to bring it off. It may be that the material defeats the medium, that the heightened manner of the stage or animation is a better canvas. It certainly got the better of Spielberg, and everyone thought he would be the perfect fit. Peter Pan feels like Hogan inhaled a mouthful of fairy dust and spat it across the screen; it’s brightly coloured and energetic, but also garish and visually undisciplined.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

I’m smarter than a beaver.

Prey (2022) (SPOILERS) If nothing else, I have to respect Dan Trachtenberg’s cynical pragmatism. How do I not only get a project off the ground, but fast-tracked as well? I know, a woke Predator movie! Woke Disney won’t be able to resist! And so, it comes to pass. Luckily for Prey , it gets to bypass cinemas and so the same sorry fate of Lightyear . Less fortunately, it’s a patience-testing snook cocking at historicity (or at least, assumed historicity), in which a young, pint-sized Comanche girl who wishes to hunt and fish – and doubtless shoot to boot – with the big boys gets to take on a Predator and make mincemeat of him. Well, of course , she does. She’s a girl, innit?

This entire edifice you see around you, built on jute.

Jeeves and Wooster 3.3: Cyril and the Broadway Musical (aka Introduction on Broadway) Well, that’s a relief. After a couple of middling episodes, the third season bounces right back, and that's despite Bertie continuing his transatlantic trip. Clive Exton once again plunders Carry On, Jeeves but this time blends it with a tale from The Inimitable Jeeves for the brightest spots, as Cyril Basington-Basington (a sublimely drippy Nicholas Hewetson) pursues his stage career against Aunt Agatha's wishes.

Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

Pulp Fiction (1994) (SPOILERS) From a UK perspective, Pulp Fiction ’s success seemed like a fait accompli; Reservoir Dogs had gone beyond the mere cult item it was Stateside and impacted mainstream culture itself (hard to believe now that it was once banned on home video); it was a case of Tarantino filling a gap in the market no one knew was there until he drew attention to it (and which quickly became over-saturated with pale imitators subsequently). Where his debut was a grower, Pulp Fiction hit the ground running, an instant critical and commercial success (it won the Palme d’Or four months before its release), only made cooler by being robbed of the Best Picture Oscar by Forrest Gump . And unlike some famously-cited should-have-beens, Tarantino’s masterpiece really did deserve it.

I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord’s on, Barrington.

Monte Carlo or Bust aka Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969) (SPOILERS) Ken Annakin’s semi-sequel to Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines tends to be rather maligned, usually compared negatively to its more famous predecessor. Which makes me rather wonder if those expressing said opinion have ever taken the time to scrutinise them side by side. Or watch them back to back (which would be more sensible). Because Monte Carlo or Bust is by far the superior movie. Indeed, for all its imperfections and foibles (not least a performance from Tony Curtis requiring a taste for comic ham), I adore it. It’s probably the best wacky race movie there is, simply because each set of competitors, shamelessly exemplifying a different national stereotype (albeit there are two pairs of Brits, and a damsel in distress), are vibrant and cartoonish in the best sense. Albeit, it has to be admitted that, as far as said stereotypes go, Annakin’s home side win

Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

Paterson (2016) (SPOILERS) Spoiling a movie where nothing much happens is difficult, but I tend to put the tag on in a cautionary sense much of the time. Paterson is Jim Jarmusch at his most inert and ambient but also his most rewardingly meditative. Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver and modest poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, is a stoic in a fundamental sense, and if he has a character arc of any description, which he doesn’t really, it’s the realisation that is what he is. Jarmusch’s picture is absent major conflict or drama; the most significant episodes feature Paterson’s bus breaking down, the English bull terrier Marvin – whom Paterson doesn’t care for but girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) dotes on – destroying his book of poetry, and an altercation at the local bar involving a gun that turns out to be a water pistol. And Paterson takes it all in his stride, genial to the last, even the ruination of his most earnest, devoted work (the only disappoint

Death to Bill and Ted!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) (SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell , as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick. Evil Bill : First, we totally kill Bill and Ted. Evil Ted : Then we take over their lives. My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reev

I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

Last Action Hero (1993) (SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) (SPOILERS) There’s something daringly perverse about the attempt to weave a serious-minded, generation-spanning saga from the hare-brained premise of The Place Beyond the Pines . When he learns he is a daddy, a fairground stunt biker turns bank robber in order to provide for his family. It’s the kind of “only-in-Hollywood” fantasy premise you might expect from a system that unleashed Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and Point Break on the world. But this is an indie-minded movie from the director of the acclaimed Blue Valentine ; it demands respect and earnest appraisal. Unfortunately it never recovers from the abject silliness of the set-up. The picture is littered with piecemeal characters and scenarios. There’s a hope that maybe the big themes will even out the rocky terrain but in the end it’s because of this overreaching ambition that the film ends up so undernourished. The inspiration for the movie

Everyone creates the thing they dread.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) (SPOILERS) Avengers: Age of Ultron ’s problem isn’t one of lack. It benefits from a solid central plot. It features a host of standout scenes and set pieces. It hands (most of) its characters strong defining moments. It doesn’t even suffer now the “wow” factor of seeing the team together for the first time has subsided. Its problem is that it’s too encumbered. Maybe its asking to much of a director to effectively martial the many different elements required by an ensemble superhero movie such as this, yet Joss Whedon’s predecessor feels positively lean in comparison. Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War , Infinity Wars I & II , Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok . It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions ( Iron Man II ), but there are points in Age of Ultron whe

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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