Pan review

[Westside Steve]

Pan

 

Warner Brothers

 

Pg. 111 min

 

 

The legend and subsequent films featuring the boy who refused to grow up, Peter Pan, have been in the public imagination for decades and scores of productions. In all of these incarnations have you ever wondered just what the backstory might be, how did Peter Pan come to be what he is? How did he and Captain Hook meet?

 

 

Nope. And frankly neither did I. And even more frankly I don't care anymore than I did before I saw the latest version, PAN.

 

 

To be honest I've never really been a huge fan of this particular franchise besides being disturbingly attracted to Cathy Rigby and Tinkerbell but it can most certainly hold the promise of a reasonably entertaining film.

 

Not this time.

 

 

You see, like so many films in the past few years this is a prequel, meaning a tale to fill in questions and answers about how the characters came to be. I often enjoy this kind of thing and it's not that that ruined PAN for me.

 

My beef lies within the fact that the story is insipid, the script clumsy and the acting shockingly bad.

 

 

Our little flashback begins in World War 2 era London as a tearful young woman is leaving her little baby on the steps of a desolate looking Orphanage. Flash forward 12 years and we find the youngster living in poverty with the other orphans at the mercy of the overbearing and cruel nuns who run the place. The children live in relative squalor and without any decent food or niceties that children should have. Soon Peter and his buddy find out why when they stumble across a treasure trove of stolen food clothing and money that these conniving nuns have embezzled and squirreled away in the basement of the orphanage.

 

 

Abruptly, apparently abandoning that storyline, strange creatures come from the sky and carry many of the boys off to a floating pirate ship ruled by none other than Blackbeard the pirate. (Hugh Jackman).

 

After a long and surprisingly non exciting chase scene the boys are delivered, by the evil pirate, as slaves in some sort of mining operation. That's where Peter makes the acquaintance of a rogue named Hook, another captive who suspect that that because that Pete can fly that he might just be a hero from a prophecy destined to free the good guys from the bad guys.

 

The "reluctant Messiah from legend" is one of the oldest plot devices in fantasies.

 

Of course all the kid wants to do is to find his mother who is a fairy queen or something like that.

 

Let me be clear, it is a rare movie that has absolutely no redeeming quality and here its the cinematography and special effects. While the almost non-stop action is pointless, everything looks nice. The flying ships the lair of Neverland the mermaids fairies etc are all very nice examples of fantasy art. Of course as I often mentioned you can only look at a piece of art for so long before you get bored, and that boredom should set in after about 20 minutes.

 

Worse, however, then the boredom is the acting especially of to of the main characters, Blackbeard and Hook (Garrett Hedlund).

 

We know Jackman to be a competent actor so one could blame this on bad direction. I suppose that could possibly also be said for Hedlund, but he really turns in one of the worst performances I've seen in any film.

 

 

So bottom line, even though Peter Pan can fly this load of rubbish laid down by terrible writing and even worse acting never gets off the ground.

 

D

 

WSS

 

 

 

Westside Steve Simmons