Yes, more Disney live-action adaptations… another one, the last one we had was Pinocchio and we all know how that ended up being… a frustration for most of us, one of the worst Disney live-action remakes ever made… and now, over 7 months later, Disney is back for another real life adventure based on an classic animated movie, and this time is for Peter Pan & Wendy and I’ll start telling you that yes, it’s better than Pinocchio, but it’s far from being perfect.
Directed by the visionary David Lowery (Pete’s Dragon, A Ghost Story, The Green Knight), Peter Pan & Wendy is a more grounded and complex version of the original animated film, I must confess it’s been years since I’ve seen Peter Pan (1953) so I won’t make very specific comparisons to the animated version, I’ll give my opinion on this movie itself, without basing it in the original.
The movie tells the story of Wendy (mainly), a girl who’s growing up and becoming a teenager, where responsibilities will start to come but she’s definitely not ready for it, and when she says she “doesn’t want to grow up” is when Peter Pan shows up, Peter takes Wendy and her brothers to Neverland, does this feels rushed? Yes, in the movie that was very rushed, after 5 minutes through the movie they were already in Neverland, where they meet Captain Hook (Jude Law) and YES, just YES! Jude Law is the MVP of the movie, my favorite character, he brings a menacing and a character that honors the personality of the original Hook!
The cast shines, many actors and actresses I never heard about in my life, they all do a great job, highlighting Alexander Molony as Peter Pan, he did great as his character, his humor matched with the humor from the original version, it’s a very interesting character and pretty amusing. Ever Gabo Anderson does also a great job as Wendy, she carrie’s most of the emotional scenes, and she can transmit that feeling to the viewer in s great way, shes a good actress in general. The rest of the main cast is great, including Yara Shahidi as Tinker Bell, Jim Gaffigan as Mr. Smee, etc.
My biggest complaint about this movie is the the thing I was most afraid of since the beginning: the script… not saying it’s bad, but it flaws sometimes to entertain the viewer for too long, and sometimes has some boring conversations that takes the movie to nowhere, but honestly this movie felt like it needed a longer runtime so we could have had a better character development between most of them, flashbacks were something that I thought it could fit good. Honestly, I wanted more Hook.
Talking about the technical part, it’s decent, visuals are very solid, CGI is great but color pallet is like very dark, not saying it’s a bad thing, I know that’s really a Lowery thing, and I admire his work. The action scenes in general were great, but I felt like it needed a little bit of more naturalism, we could tell that all of that was all choreographed, I know that’s what they did, but it’s not suppose to look like it does.
Peter Pan & Wendy is a charming, enchanting and emotional adventure that despite having some flaws, specially in the script, it manages to become a remarkable and entertaining live-action remake.
★★★½
Peter Pan & Wendy releases on Disney+ on April 28
