Peter Pan & Wendy Review: A Gentle Remake That Tries To Soar
In the summer of 2016, writer/director David Lowery pulled off what feels like a magic trick in retrospect: he made a Disney remake that was actually quite good. His take on "Pete's Dragon" may not have set the box office aflame, but his tender approach to a story about an orphaned boy in the forest with only a mammoth dragon for a friend resulted in a low-stakes but wonderful family adventure. Of course, the major reason why "Pete's Dragon" worked so well as a remake is that it eschewed almost everything aside from the aforementioned logline that's present in the 1977 original, from big musical numbers to con-artist bad guys. And "Pete's Dragon" was able to eschew those aspects because while the original has some fans, it's by no means one of Disney's biggest titles.
The same cannot be said for "Peter Pan & Wendy," Lowery's latest Disney remake, this time of the 1953 animated film that has served as the source for a wildly popular theme-park attraction, a handful of earworm songs, and one of Disney's preeminent icons in Tinker Bell. So while it's not surprising that Lowery's take on the material is well-done and sometimes quite wonderful, it's equally unsurprising that the choice to often hew to the original film serves as a creative albatross.
Unlike "Pete's Dragon," this new take on J.M. Barrie's story about a boy who wouldn't grow up hits many of the familiar storytelling beats in broad strokes. We start with the three Darling children: John (Joshua Pickering), Michael (Jacobi Jupe), and their older sister Wendy (Ever Anderson), the latter of whom is straddling the line between having childish fun and being scolded by her parents (Molly Parker and Alan Tudyk) about not setting a good example of what it's like to be grown up. One fateful night, the three children are invited by that boy who wouldn't grow old, Peter Pan (Alexander Molony), to join him and Tinker Bell (Yara Shahidi) in the magical realm of Neverland. Once there, they're thrown into the age-old battle with the nefarious pirate Captain Hook (Jude Law), whose hand was once eaten off by a crocodile.
It's not that Lowery and his co-writer Toby Halbrooks do a carbon copy of the 1953 film, as was the case with the "Lion King" remake or something like "Aladdin" or "Beauty and the Beast," which each try halfheartedly to do something different before backsliding into the story everyone knows and loves. There are obvious issues with "Peter Pan" as it relates to political correctness that are instantly notable in "Peter Pan & Wendy." Some of it is casting: Molony is an Indian actor, whereas past Pans have been played by white actors; some of the Lost Boys are also girls, and the casting among those ruffians is similarly color-blind. Some of it's simply in how the material treats the female characters. This time around, while there is still a Tiger Lily (Alyssa Wapanatahk), she's no longer the silent daughter of a ridiculous stereotype of Native American culture, but the leader of a tribe who has a voice of her own.
Changing a troubled story around its core
The most notable overall changes in the story are less about what's on the surface. First, there's a shift in the protagonist/antagonist relationship between Peter Pan and Captain Hook. The less said in detailing that change, the better, but suffice to say, Law is called upon to do more than just an outlandishly evil bad guy with a chip on his shoulder and a hook on his hand. (And it's equally unsurprising that Law is quite good in the moment where Hook gets to be fairly complex.)
An equally stark change is hinted at in this film's title. This is no longer a story just about Peter Pan; you could argue that in this version, he's not even the true lead, as opposed to Wendy, as portrayed by Anderson. Anderson, at least, delivers a stronger performance than Molony, though it's arguably because the latter is tasked with playing up the faux-bravado of Peter Pan, which tends to be one-note after not too long. As Wendy, though, Anderson gets to work through more multi-dimensional material and seems up to the task.
If there is a place where "Peter Pan & Wendy" struggles, it is in the very notion of remaking such an antiquated story as "Peter Pan" and trying to modernize so much of what exists around the core of the story, while leaving that core intact. Some of the dialogue here feels a bit more anachronistic than was the case in the 1953 film, and yet the setting remains roughly the same. The Darling children are not straight out of the 2020s before they're sent off to Neverland; Wendy is weighing what it would be like to go to a British boarding school, the concept of which feels at least a hundred years old (even if such schools exist today).
A good chunk of what happens in Neverland feels like the result of pushing back against the setting of this story, which is so heavily about the allure of youthful nostalgia that Hook all but spells it out in his antagonistic nature towards the young scofflaws he fights, one time saying "I find you guilty of being a child." But even though the songs may only appear as grace notes on the soundtrack, and the characters may be less one-dimensional than before, there's little Lowery can do to fully remove himself from the original "Peter Pan" by keeping so much of that film present here.
It's not all for naught, of course. Lowery and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli create a verdant version of Neverland, one that's both appealing enough to Peter Pan but never quite alluring enough to the Darling children once they get a full taste of it. Even though this will be going straight to Disney+, "Peter Pan & Wendy" looks and feels as big as any big-screen treatment should. Both Law and Jim Gaffigan (as Mr. Smee) are solid throughout, locking in very quickly to the childlike mentality of the story and how Lowery frames the yarn from the kids' point of view. And of course, the bar is pretty damn low with regard to Disney's other remakes; this film clears that bar with relative ease. On its own, "Peter Pan & Wendy" is enjoyable enough. But that too is a low bar, and considering that David Lowery has already made Disney's one truly great remake, it's perhaps logical that he wouldn't hit another home run. It's good that he tries, even if this isn't quite successful enough to clear the fence.
/Film Rating: 7 out of 10