Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Peter Pan and Wendy’ on Disney+, Director David Lowery’s Lightly Visionary Disney Rehash

A couple years ago, I mused whether David Lowery’s Peter Pan and Wendy (now on Disney+) or Benh Zeitlin’s 2020 film Wendy would better execute the following premise: What if Terrence Malick directed a version of Peter Pan? Well, Zeitlin wins that sweepstakes, but Lowery, I can now confirm, made the better film overall. Which doesn’t address the question as to whether or not the world needs yet another adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s classic tale, so it takes some significant work from its creative principals to convince us that what we’re watching is worthwhile: Lowery, who helmed the Pete’s Dragon remake for Disney, is coming off near-masterpieces in A Ghost Story and The Green Knight. Jude Law gives his strongest performance in years as Captain Hook. And, playing Wendy, 15-year-old Ever Anderson – looking like the spitting image of her mother, Milla Jovovich – is the film’s emotional anchor. Their collective effort goes a long way towards cutting through the cynicism of Disney’s live-action remake onslaught – hey, let’s make new movies but not come up with any new stories! – and asserting the film’s worth as a work of relatively artful entertainment. 

PETER PAN AND WENDY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: You telling me you don’t know how this story goes? How some children in England read stories about a boy who can fly and never grows old, and play and pretend to be that boy, and are eventually visited by that boy? That they’re whisked away to that boy’s land-out-of-time for adventures involving lost children, nasty pirates and a giant crocodile? OK, fine – we’ll go through it again, via Lowery and co-screenwriter Toby Halbrook’s new interpretation: Wendy Darling (Anderson) is sad. Bummed. Mopey. She’ll leave for boarding school the next morning, away from her parents (Molly Parker and Alan Tudyk), the warmth of her childhood home and the sweetly rambunctious life she has with her younger brothers Michael (Jacobi Jupe) and John (Joshua Pickering). She breaks her melancholy with a bit of wooden-swordplay with her brothers, and they accidentally break a mirror. Her father – a bit of a stiff, if I may say so – chastises her: Is this how she wants to spend her last evening at home? She’s too old for this shit. (I’m paraphrasing.)

Wendy’s crying quietly in her bed when her mom sits next to her. Going away to boarding school and then to college – that’s what she did, and now Wendy will, too. Change is a part of life and she has to learn to deal with it. (I’m paraphrasing again.) And this is when Wendy utters the fateful words, “Perhaps I don’t want to grow up.” Somebody heard that sentiment loud and clear. Somebody from Somewhere Else. You know where. Mother sings Wendy to sleep with a lullaby, maybe for the last time, and later that night, the girl suddently awakens, floating above the floor. Tinker Bell (Yara Shahidi) has fairy-dusted her into the air. Then Peter Pan (Alexander Molony) arrives at the window, much to Wendy and Michael and John’s shock. “How are you real?”, they ask, and I don’t think there’s a good answer for that. How is anything real, would be my retort. Anyway, this is when Peter gives them a flying lesson: Close your eyes, think happy thoughts and fling yourself out the window. Caution to the wind, they follow his lead, and soon zoom through the night sky, through Big Ben and, it seems, through the space-time continuum itself.

Soon enough, Peter and Wendy and the boys soar into Neverland, which is all blue skies and puffy white clouds – and cannonballs, coming straight for them, but easily dodged, thank the almighty. A crew of grimy pirates spotted them and fired away, under the orders of Captain Hook (Law), he of greasy hair and twirled mustaches and stern, fiery-wide eyes. Where his hand used to be is a big hook. Where Hook’s hand is now is inside an enormous crocodile (OK, I exaggerate – it’s surely been digested and eliminated by now), and it’s all the fault of his arch-foe, Peter Pan. The kids hide atop an outcropping of rock and one of the cannonballs hits close enough that Wendy, when she awakens face down on the beach, must attempt to rescue her brothers from the bad guys. This is when she meets the Lost Boys, some of whom are girls, joined by the indigenous warrior-girl Tiger Lily (Alyssa Wapanatahk). Peter of course arrives to buckle some swashes, and the adventure continues from the literal to the metaphorical and philosophical as we learn more about who Peter Pan and Captain Hook actually are. You know, as people, not just as a hero and a villain in a very famous story.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: In the pantheon of modern Disney live-action remakes – please hold in your spew; some of them are very much worth seeing! – Peter Pan and Wendy doesn’t quite reach the vigor of Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book (visually stunning) or Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella (benefits greatly from the Blanchett Factor), but is a touch more memorable than Niki Caro’s Mulan (a solid battle epic), and head-and-shoulders above Favreau’s The Lion King (empty spectacle).

Performance Worth Watching: Maybe you’ve rolled your eyes at the puff pieces with headlines proclaiming that Law’s Method acting “scared” other people on set. Uh huh. Sounds to me like pre-release marketing machinery at work. But Law quite remarkably roots around in the guts of a cartoon character and finds a villain, a human, in conflict with himself. Is it too late for Hook to redeem himself? That we’d even consider the notion in spite of a couple marrow-chilling monologues is a testament to the strength of Law’s performance.

Memorable Dialogue: Hook justifies his evil ways in a Law-brings-down-the-house speech: “You find me a child who truly knows the difference between right and wrong, and I’ll show you a man who can’t remember why it mattered in the first place.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Two glaring observations right off the bat: One, Peter Pan and Wendy is woke. Woke woke woke. So very woke! And for the people so delicate of disposition that “girl power” stories get their knickers in a twist and it bothers them to see fresh interpretations that eschew racial stereotypes excised from a classic story for more thoughtful character depictions – well, those people can go live in their teeny tiny small world after all, where they can suffer without the delights this movie might share. And two, the movie would look absolutely marvelous in a theater, on a very large screen; so much so, it’s a shame that Disney would funnel it directly to streaming, where it’ll exist languidly in menus alongside Robert Zemeckis’ cruddy Pinocchio remake, a fate Lowery’s film doesn’t deserve. Shall we interpret this shortsighted release strategy as a lack of confidence in the material? And if so, should we suppress the urge to slap Mickey Mouse awake to the reality of its strengths? 

Anyway. I’m happy to report that Lowery winnows out and emphasizes the poignancy of this too-oft-told story by putting in the work to develop Wendy, Peter and Hook’s characters, and to establish Wendy as the heart and soul of the film. Once the spritely, medium-violent shenanigans of the first act-and-a-half or so wind down and we begin settling into Neverland, there’s a lovely moment in which Wendy comforts the Lost Boys with the same lullaby her mother sang – a lullaby overheard by Hook, who’s haunted by it, and prompted to remember the person he was before he became a diabolical fiend. He’s not sure whether to follow the impulse to squash it, or explore it. The scene cracks the film open wide for a rumination on the nature of change, and how it happens, and why it happens, and why we fear it and struggle to embrace it. Change: It’s gonna happen. Are you going to let it curdle you into a state of fetid stasis, or let it render you a transforming, vibrating being brimming with life? 

Crucially, Peter Pan and Wendy positions Peter and Hook within the same static reality. The film isn’t so simple as to render them opposite sides of a coin; their relationship is more yin-and-yang, more three-dimensionally spherical, the edges of the two characters blurring into each other as we see a glimpse of the darkness within Peter and the potential for redemption within Hook. These things come to light during the movie’s somewhat glum, broody midsection, when the adults in the audience find their engagement with the story freshly piqued, and younger viewers likely also engaged on a meaningful level – just because they’re young doesn’t mean they always yawn and fidget when the swords stop clanging and the camera stops moving so much. 

And it’s during that midsection when Anderson and Law’s performances shine – and Molony’s presence diminished somewhat, because there’s only so much bandwidth for charisma in this movie. It takes a minute or two (or 40 or 50) for the film to find its footing, for the story to align itself with Lowery’s visual ambitions. It’s frequently delightful to the eye, from the rich interiors of the Darling family home to the dim-lit caves and spacious seas of Neverland, and the vibrant action sequences, the highlight of which is the big third-act spectacle of a pirate ship taking flight under some considerable fairy power. At times, there doesn’t seem to be quite enough room for Peter Pan and Wendy to explore all of its potential. Tinker Bell and Tiger Lily enjoy a moment or two each, but feel like afterthoughts, colorful fodder at the periphery of the Wendy-Peter-Hook emotional triangle – an emotional triangle that’s executed with the passion and intent we probably shouldn’t expect from Disney rehash. Lowery breathes new life into an old story, and it’s quite easy to feel grateful about it.

Our Call: Peter Pan and Wendy upends expectations by showing directorial vision and narrative ambition. It’s fun and thoughtful with equal measure. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.