Here are two things we’ve all had quite enough, thank you: screen adaptations of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, and live-action remakes of classic Disney animations. So as both, this flesh, blood and pixel reworking of the studio’s beloved 1953 hand-drawn original looks, on paper, surplus to requirements twice over. In fact, it might end up being the most beautiful, moving and all-around-loveliest children’s film of the year.
This is all down to the vision and nerve of its director and co-writer David Lowery, who gives his viewers (and employers) around 20 minutes of the painstakingly crafted homage they were expecting before plunging Barrie’s tale into far weirder, eerier waters than you might expect. And then just as you’re starting to panic, he hoists it back out again by its ankles for an old-fashioned swashbuckling finale that builds to one of the most inspiredly playful action sequences in an age.
Look, if a critic described Peter Pan & Wendy as a Hegelian dialectic for kids, they’d be frogmarched straight to Pseud’s Corner, with good reason. But, well… it isn’t not one – Lowery’s film hits us with everything we love about Barrie’s story before delving into its shadow side (isn’t there a wonder to growing up that an eternal childhood would deny us?), then reconciling the shade with the light. It’s all done crisply and simply enough for an eight-year-old to easily follow along with the film’s train of thought, and movingly enough to turn any adults on the sofa beside them to a sniffling heap.
For those of us whose teeth are still twingeing from the Super Mario Bros film, what joy and relief to see a film for younger viewers that is actually about something. Yes, it has fun with giant crocodiles, pirate ships and breakneck moonlit flights past Edwardian London’s steeples and chimney pots – and Lowery excels at all that. But he also cares about giving his pre-teen audience images that will stick in their souls. Lowery’s 2016 remake of Pete’s Dragon was already the most worthwhile of these money-spinning do-overs by far – but with this one, he may have surpassed it.
Ever Anderson, the 15-year-old daughter of the Resident Evil star Milla Jovovich, plays Wendy Darling: she’s the hero of the piece, while Peter (Alexander Molony) is a more ambiguous, capricious figure, in line with the character’s pagan roots. (The film shares more DNA with Lowery’s surreal 2021 Arthurian riff The Green Knight than you might expect, which is to say: more than zero.)