Review of Pan (2015) by Jérémie F — 23 Apr 2016

The century old story of Peter Pan has, in recent years, been the focus of many Hollywood directors. Joe Wright tries to follow in the footsteps of other Pan stories, along the lines of "Hook" and "Return to Never Land." This film is devoid of all the childhood nostalgia that is Peter Pan.

The director and writers took a 'prequel' approach to this classic tale, and despite their best efforts and big budget, it's missing all the nostalgia of the classic story. They tried to update it as much as possible, but in the process they made it something a bit gaudy to look at, and like most modernization, it loses the history that connects us to tales like this. Still, I enjoyed the visual aspects of the film. It certainly has a fantastical feel to the scenery and characters and they all blend together quite beautifully.They also focused on a WW2 era story, which was about 40 years after the tale was written, so it was a little off the mark with the original. That being said, they still told an interesting enough story. Actor Hugh Jackman did a fantastic job as the dread pirate Blackbeard, who really dominated most of the scenes and was a real pleasure to watch!

However, there were some truly bizarre moments in the story-line as well, including a few sing-song moments using Nirvana's "Smell's Like Teen Spirit" and the Ramone's "Blitzkrieg Bop". It made it feel like they were trying to make a "Moulin Rouge" moment in this film, which is a strange thing, considering it's a children's film and felt totally out of place with the rest of the story. In addition, near the end of the film, you're left wondering what happened to a few of the well known characters (Mr. Smee for example), with no real explanation and the viewer is left wondering as the director tries to wrap things up quickly in the final act.

All in all, it's something that adults and kids can enjoy together, but it missed that childhood feeling, that previous films have brought to the screen.

2/5.