Reviews

The movie has it all. It has a budget. A music score. Action. Adventure. And a ton of character to get attached to. CGI and they even built a real pirate ship (in a studio).

On paper this should work. Has to work. So why does the movie fall flat on its face?

It has no heart. No magic. The problem is how the small changes to the story gutted it. Not compared to the old story, but as a stand alone story.

You don't believe me, read on -

Wendy is now the main character and as the movie opens, the camera follows her. Let us see where this new story takes us.

Immediately, seconds into the movie, she gives her mother attitude "I heard you the first time mother!" Wendy says.

Why? What is the purpose?

In the original movie, the Mother and daughter are allies. They are levelheaded and have a strong bond. Here Wendy is a spoiled brat. And there is no reason for it. At one point she says to her mother "And what if I don't want your life!" Wow. Why do we need this? Whom wrote this? We have departed from the original story, drove off a cliff, and went into teen drama and at this point I don't think it is better.

Then as her brothers play fight, Wendy proceeds to grab a sword and join in the fight with her brothers. She jumps on top of them and fights to win. Why? In the original the older brother is very careful when fighting his young sibling and pretends he is stabbed and defeated. And falls to the ground vanquished to the delighted squeals of his little brother. It is cute.

There is no real competition between them. This implies what a close family they are, they care for each other. Wendy in the original is the bigger sister, the storyteller. She is older and mature but also a kid and you can see she loves her little brothers almost like a mother.

I guess this was too much for the new Disney vision. A girl acting like a mother, taking care of....children.

So our new Wendy fights now. It looked like some one may loose an eye during the duel.

When Wendy wins, because she is tough and strong as a boy you see, now a mirror is broken. She proceeds to call her brother a tattletale for looking at her and thus her father understanding who is responsible for the broken mirror.

So we have now a sibling infighting. Why? At this point I don't like the new Wendy. As a matter of fact I dislike her and so I suspect most of the audience. This is not a question which one is better. It is just the new one is behaving like a spoiled boy and all the magic of the old story is lost.

Ok lets continue: She tells her father it is all her brother's fault, and when the father leaves and her brother asks why did you say it is our fault, Wendy responds "you are a pirate are you not? It is every man for him self."

This is beyond stupid. New Wendy is selfish. BVut why make her so? The only thing I can think off is this agenda that girls need to be be as strong and independent as boys, overwrites any actual story telling.

Contrast to the magic of the original where every scene sets her as mature and some one that would protect her brothers, she would do anything for them. She loves them and in the original when Peter wants to take Wendy with him, she even tells him that her brothers are coming along and there is no point arguing it. In this new one "every man is for him self" Yey! Is a total contrast.

This goes on and on.

I have to say the casting is mostly a miss. Peter is not an actor and a child, he is a child actor and he acts like one.

Wendy looks too big, I guess they wanted Milla Jovovich daughter regardless if she fit. She also overacts, for example when she sees tinkerbell for the first time and says "I don't thing that is a bug" her face instead of wonder is showing fright, which confused me until I realized she is overplaying all emotions.

The best star is obviously Jude Law who is on another level (along with Molly Parker whom is flawless for her screen-time). Tinker-bell is also well cast as her face and play are exactly the type of natural joy the movie needs to portray. - for those three the movie gets 3 stars from me.

The little brothers and the 'lost boys' are mos-tly again children acting as best as they can.

The movie score is over the top, constantly trying to tug at our emotions, when we are not there yet. Thus it does not compliment the movie but is taking over and borders on annoying.

But as we saw, the biggest issue is that the movie has no consistent inner map. At one point Wendy even slaps Peter Pan. At that point I wondered how it would look if Peter slapped her right back.

3 stars for this flop.

I blame the director and the script writer. This movie has good parts, but at the end if i had to pin the bad it is the way the story was put together. You see an 'amateur' directing with a vision which i could not agree with. I had trouble expressing whats wrong with this movie but there it is - an amateur story telling.

Without giving spoilers, i found my self disagreeing with the tempo of the action, the forced confrontations and negotiations, the arguments for why the characters are acting this way. It seemed that they were doing it because the director demanded it for the next scene to make sense. Even in small things like the doctor saying to Farrell 'we found you by the river'... seemed to say to me, so that's why you are here as you see we have a river in this country and you were by it and we found you, and so there you go, that's why you are back here with me lets move on .... made me angry.

So i disliked the movie as it was forced. Farrell is nice but working with this script/director is a pain to watch.