Rating of
1/4
Peter Pan movie yet Smee is the best part. WTF?
Indyfreak - wrote on 10/24/16
Memo to Warner Brothers...
STOP MAKING EVERYTHING INTO HARRY POTTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I mean seriously, the movie comes right out of the playbook for their Harry Potter formula and all the ripoffs that tried to cash in on it. Let's go over things shall we?
1) Crappy childhood? Check
2) Meteoric rise thanks to a convenient prophecy? Check
3) Fantasy realm that cannot be accessed by ordinary humans? Check.
4) Sidekick who's rough around the edges and can't talk to women? Check.
5) Nasty villain trying to become immortal and invincible? Check.
It's worse than Harry Potter though. Pan rips off every other epic fantasy/adventure/whatever that used the same plot devices but good god does Pan suck at it! Think Indiana Jones meets Hook meets Avatar meets Chronicles of Narnia. And yea, it's as clumsy and rushed and formulaic as it sounds.
Joe Wright does his damnedest to hide how bad the movie is with some admittedly spirited action scenes and a couple of daft tonal shifts that would be funny if not so jarring. Though this is supposed to be a period piece beginning in World War 2, there is a big musical number with Nirvana and modern slang is used willy-nilly.
Acting is forced and hammy across the board. Rooney Mara looks embarrassed and Garrett Hedlund gives one hell of a Harrison Ford impression. Their romance is less believable once you realize Rooney Mara is more convicing as a lesbian opposite Cate Blanchett in "Carol". Hugh Jackman gives perhaps his career's worst performance as Blackbeard who sniffs fairy dust like crack cocaine and leaps around mugging the camera. As for the boy playing Peter Pan, Levi Miller could pass for the character in a far better story than he is served here. The sole actor who does come out with a good performance is shockingly enough whoever it is they got to play Smee. He knows he's in a bad movie and is clearly having fun.
This movie cost $150M and it does look pretty sometimes, it is not enough for the bad plot and lame acting. Pan is as phoney and artificial as all the other wannabe blockbusters as of late.
