Review of Pan (2015) by Dawdlingpoet — 28 Nov 2021

This is an easy to watch entertaining family film. Its mostly a family film, although I would warn that there are some scenes featuring the villain, as well as some potentially mildly frightening environments, which may scare especially young viewers, hence the parental guidance rating it received in the UK. I'd reckon its ok for kids maybe 9 or so years old or older, at a guess. As a piece of imaginative fantasy its ok. It is certainly pretty imaginative, however I wasn't entirely impressed with the CGI - the quality wasn't quite up to the same par as what I've seen possible via other modern films. I dont know whether this was made on a much lower budget or not - its not awful but I just felt it wasn't quite as realistic as other films have seemed, such as Avatar for example. Of course Neverland is a made up place and as such isn't meant to be realistic, thats not what I mean though. Some of the backdrops look pretty good, while other aspects seemed distinctly artificial, such as moments when the real life people are interacting with CGI.

I felt some of the acting was a bit over the top too, for example Blackbeard when he's shouting out, making speeches to the masses below and that sort of thing. Blackbeard is played by Hugh Jackman, who is certainly a good actor but perhaps the script wasn't ideal for this. I suppose some young viewers may quite like the over exaggerated (over the top) booming voice attribute, so you could argue either way with that aspect of it.

There was one piece of dialogue that made me smirk and I thought I'd share between I think Hook and Peter - 'those savages? I certainly never plan to stop and TALK to them!' to which Peter says 'how do you know their so bad then?' me *doh* (I'd guess the clue is in the name but there again, maybe thats a moral message about not judging people by their preverbial book cover?).

In any case its a reasonable family film - its entertaining alright but its not amazing or especially memorable. Some scenes are more immervise than others but certainly overall its ok - not bad for a family film really I suppose.