Movie Review: "Pan" (Joe Wright, 2015)

FLYING WITHOUT TINKERBELL by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Garrett Hedlund in Captain Hook in “Pan.”  Photo ©Warner Bros. Pictures

Worn but shining, director Joe Wright’s “Pan,” a retelling of the Peter Pan saga, tastes like a carefully-cultivated apple just past its prime—soft at the core, but so smoothly juicy on the surface that you gobble it gladly.  The story of the boy who flies and magically escapes the menace of acne may have been hammered into pop culture by a corporate nail gun, but Mr. Wright’s cinematic bravado and passionate optimism keep Peter soaring through the clouds of movie-going Neverland.

            This Peter is played by Levi Miller as a defiant youngster with a hungry grin and a lust for mischief.  Raised in an English orphanage in the midst of World War II, Peter doesn’t mope over his Dickens-worthy porridge—he just schemes to steal the cupcakes hoarded by his crotchety caretaker, Mother Barnabas (Kathy Burke).  Mother Barnabas, meanwhile, has dipped her fingers into something more nefarious than butter cream frosting: she’s raking in gold coins by tossing unsuspecting orphans into the leathery clutches of the showboating pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman).

            All too soon, Peter is slaving away in Blackbeard’s mines, ordered to crack open the mountains of Neverland to find some pixie dust (the glittery flecks of it are what keep the elderly Blackbeard looking like Mr. Jackman).  Mr. Wright, however, has no intention of lingering in gloomy tunnels—with the same theatrical panache that he unfurled in his wonderful 2012 version of “Anna Karenina,” he spirits Peter off on a careening adventure with a jolly young Captain Hook (Garrett Hedlund) and the blandly wise Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara).

It’s not all a fairy tale gas; “Pan” still carries the moldy whiff that clings to so many childhood adventures resuscitated with manic Hollywood life support.  Yet the film is vastly more watchable than heinous revivals like Bryan Singer’s “Jack the Giant Slayer.”  That’s because Mr. Wright expends his visual prowess so fiercely, thrusting, bouncing, and sweeping his actors through gloriously cotton candy-colored landscapes dreamed up by the movie’s production designer, Aline Bonetto. 

            At times, that’s not enough.  But “Pan” is so spirited, hopeful, and heartfelt that you can’t walk out of the theater without feeling a little lighter on your feet.  You may not feel like flying, but you may be in the mood to bounce as two characters do in one scene—on a trampoline, flailing like acrobats in Mr. Wright’s joyous carnival.