Living a desolate life at a London orphanage, 12-year-old Peter (Levi Miller) finds himself taken to the fantastical world of Neverland. Adventure awaits him as he meets a new friend James Hook (Garrett Hedlund) and the tribal warrior Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara). This group must now band together to save Neverland from the evil pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman). Along the way, the orphan must uncover his own true destiny, becoming the legendary hero forever known as Peter Pan.
The film starts off with a voice saying that you may have heard this story plenty of times (which I believe most of you have) but not this one. I am very skeptical of that. I assume everyone has heard of the characters. You got your Peter Pan and your Hook, not quite a captain just yet. There are other characters that I haven’t (but probably others) quite heard of like Tiger Lily and Blackbeard (in the context of Peter Pan). I found this direction to be interesting but I found they didn’t add much to the story other than being a cliche source of encouragement (Tiger Lily) and being a transvestite (Blackbeard). I found there to be many WTF moments while watching this film but the worst WTF moment has to be Hugh Jackman’s performance as Blackbeard. I had a hard time ever taking him seriously as a character when the way his character was designed (makeup, clothes, facial hair, etc) makes him look like a transvestite. Not only does he have the misfortune of looking like a transvestite, his performance (or over-performance), to me, was the worst of the film. What made it so bad was not only the way he looked like a transvestite, his dialogue was just cringe-worthy. He is not the only one to get my scorn, however. Garrett Hedlund’s performance as Hook seemed very out-of-place to me. His dialogue was bad but not as bad as Jackman’s Blackbeard and the baffling decision to give him a southern accent (I don’t know whether or not he ever was supposed to have one) just felt a little off when juxtaposed to the world the filmmakers were trying to create. I thought Levi Miller was okay as Peter Pan. I thought I was going to find him super annoying going in and I was pleasantly surprised when he wasn’t annoying as I thought he was going to be. He still was but not as much. I thought the underlying story here was kind of cheesy here with silly WTF moments throughout such as the appearance of Nirvana and The Ramones for some reason. I thought the beginning of the film was the worst culprit and I found it just torture. Despite the quality of the story you get to see, it sometimes gets drowned out by the special effects which appear a little too often. Overall, if there was a little more substance to go with the style, then this could have ended up a better film.
Score: 5/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.
