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Just perfect...

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Absolutely the worst movie.

A Disappointing Continuation

Every time I see this movie I feel like a kid again, it has this magical sense of wonder about it. It's adventurous, warm, magical and funny. Maybe it's cause I saw it first at a young age, but I have seen many movies at a young age, only a few still hold up like this. A Neverland that is a button press away!

This 1991 version of Peter Pan is still entertaining even today. That shows the critics where it stands. The film is way better than all the critics. Director Steven Spielberg is always coming with his style in introducing his characters for the first time in his movies. This time, he hints the audience with the hook for few scenes before revealing the antagonist Captain Hook. He even introduce the character of Rufio with an action rather than using dialogue concept.

The take on the Peter Pan story is great. Robin Williams, Julia Roberts and Dustin Hoffman are superb. The writing is wonderful and the scenes are all visually beautiful. There are some truly touching moments. The "boo box" scene could have/should have been eliminated with nothing lost. I never get tired of watching it and it's a WONDERFUL and APPROPRIATE family film.

The legend of Peter Pan goes way beyond the play that James Barrie wrote in the early 1900's and has been performed mostly in the 1950's musical version that has been filmed several times for TV. Few plays not only get produced as much as this has, but along with prequels, sequels and dramatized studies of how it was created, it is even a far greater dramatized children's tale than "The Wizard of Oz". For this 1991 Steven Spielberg smash hit, the sequel (or "fantasy follow up" which I prefer) takes place many years after the original play occurred, and deals with an aging lady named Wendy (Maggie Smith in one of her sweetest performances) who is rumored to be the original, even if the tale is only indeed a legend. She is being honored for her philanthropy for finding homes for orphaned boys, and her grandson-in-law (Robin Williams) is one of them. He's a hard nosed lawyer, too devoted to his career to pay much attention to his wife and young children, but flying to London to see the woman who found a home for him get this award shows that in spite of all that, he's got a soft spot somewhere inside his prickly personality.While there, strange things start happening. Granny Wendy has a seemingly senile brother (the adorable Arthur Malet) who keeps looking for his lost marbles, and a big sheepdog buries Williams' cellphone which his wife threw out of the window after confronting him over his angry outburst towards his children for interrupting a business conversation. During Smith's award ceremony, sudden winds burst open the sleeping children's giant windows, and when the group returns home, Williams finds a note from the alleged Captain Hook who wants one last showdown with his old rival Peter Pan. This leads Smith to reveal the truth, that Williams is indeed the aging Peter Pan, having abandoned Neverland to marry her granddaughter and turning into the grown-up he always resented. Thanks to wise- cracking Tinker Bell (a perky Julia Roberts), Williams ends up back in Neverland where the lost boys, at first not believing that this paunchy middle aged man could be their beloved pal Peter, put him through the rigorous exercise of being able to recapture what he's lost so he can reclaim his children from Hook (a delightful Dustin Hoffman, emulating Terry-Thomas) and live happily ever after with them in Neverland.Sounds great, right? Yep. In many cases, it is, but the script doesn't know whether this is a family movie geared towards children or an allegory for adults. Some of the screenplay is very wise in its message, and at other times, it sinks to the depths of what makes little boys giggle and adults groan. Most of the boys are fine, although a few (especially the very overweight grinning black kid) will grate on some viewer's nerves with their insipid "cuteness". The Asian actor playing Pan's rival for power in Neverland is very good, giving a little political twist to how they run their little community, as is the little black boy who is the first to believe that Williams is Peter. A violent twist involving one of the boys towards the end will be shocking to everybody and horrifying to the very young. At times, the interaction between the kids comes off as a cross between the youthful gangsters of "Bugsy Malone", a re-hash of the "Bowery Boys" movies and the juvenile humor of "Scooby Doo". Where this film succeeds is in the lessons that Williams learns from this adventure. Hoffman, as well as Bob Hoskins as a delightful Smee, are the acting stand-outs. It is also successful artistically, making me wish there was a Peter Pan theme park that expanded it beyond a Disneyland look. It's also ironic to see Arthur Malet getting the final shot (getting to fly after regaining his marbles), having nearly 30 years before trying to prevent banker father Dick Van Dyke from floating to the top of the ceiling in "Mary Poppins". Spielberg combines the joy of childhood and the disillusionment's of adulthood come together, but the conflict in moods and messages prevents it from becoming fully successful. With constant revivals of the musical "Peter Pan", the successful prequel ("Peter & the Starcatcher") and the fairly successful historical docu-musical ("Finding Neverland", based upon another hit movie) having hit Broadway, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody tried to musicalize this, but after seeing the movie, that seems like a nearly impossible task.