‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ Review: A New Girl in Neverland

“Peter Pan & Wendy” is a case research in one of many agonies of rising up: the conclusion that a number of the leisure that tickled us as kids — as within the many troubling scenes in Walt Disney’s 1953 animated adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan novel, together with the ditty “What Made the Red Man Red?” — have aged as gracefully as its lead character.

The filmmaker David Lowery has opted to replace it together with his personal pixie mud: save what’s good, scuttle the remaining, and add loads of spit and polish for a Twenty first-century shine.

Seventy years in the past, when Peter Pan whisked Wendy and her siblings to Neverland so she may mom his Lost Boys, he handled her like filth and she or he swooned over his heroics. Now, Wendy (a compelling Ever Anderson) decks Peter Pan (Alexander Molony) and seizes the helm of her personal story. “I don’t even know if I want to be a mother!” she protests.

Lowery is a smart alternative for a salvage try. He’s gifted at exploring the haunted corners of acquainted tales (“Pete’s Dragon,” “The Green Knight”) and has revealed a morbid reverence for the passage of time — good for a narrative whose villain, Captain Hook (a scene-stealing Jude Law, hiding beneath synthetic under-eye baggage), is actually stalked by the ticktock of a clock.

Having stripped out the questionable or merely doubtful themes, he and his co-writer, Toby Halbrooks, are left with many minutes to fill. In addition to together with a traumatic again story for Captain Hook, they add two pretty reveries on getting old: a montage through which Wendy savors her youth and one other the place she’s tantalized by the prospect of rising up.

The girl-powering of the plot means scrapping the catty mermaids, the glimmer of a love triangle with Tiger Lily (right here performed by Cree actress Alyssa Wapanatahk) and just about all the things attention-grabbing that Tinkerbell (Yara Shahidi) as soon as obtained to do, together with her a number of makes an attempt to homicide Wendy. The fairy is now merely given a digicam trick — Tinkervision — a blurred, jittery viewpoint that has its greatest second when she flies by way of blood spatter.

Lowery clearly adores the look of the cartoon. He and the cinematographer Bojan Bazelli pay it tribute with their use of moody skies, putting shadows, sudden digicam angles and a darkly stunning shade palette that shimmers like jewels in a cave. Still, these well-meaning decisions battle to cohere right into a satisfying image. Peter Pan comes throughout as a pest, and when Wendy belts the film’s thesis — “This magic belongs to no boy!” — it hits the ear like a distracting clang.

By the time the woolly pirates burst into their second rousing sea shanty (kudos to the track composer Curtis Glenn Heath), our minds start to liken the Jolly Roger to the philosophical paradox of Theseus’s ship: How many planks are you able to swap out whereas nonetheless claiming it’s the true deal?

Peter Pan & Wendy
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Disney+.