I Do Believe In Fairies! I Do! I Do!
Peter: “Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you’ll never, never have to worry about grown up things again.”
Wendy: “Never is an awfully long time.”
I’ve had a subscription to Netflix since August of 2004 and practically since I’ve been a member, I’ve been trying to get a copy of the 2003 version of Peter Pan to view ever since. It’s been out of stock or something up until last week. Anyway, it was well worth the wait.
Once again I was treated to a world where one boy refuses to grow up, where Wendy Darling is an enchanting storyteller on the verge of adolescence and the Darling children have the most charming improbable St. Bernard nanny. Once again, I was treated to sword-fights, flights of fancy, heroes, Lost Boys, blood-thirsty pirates, Princess Tiger Lilly and her Indians, and the fabulously infamous fearsome 
Captain Hook — that lonely dark villain who is symbolically the lonely, unloved boy all grown up and the father who forced his children to grow up all rolled into one. (Following tradition Jason Isaacs played both Mr. Darling and Captain Hook and managed to play both sides of the coing extraordinarily well, I might add.)
The movie itself is breath-takingly done. Really it’s a piece of art, every bit of it — the dialog, the imagry, the special effects, the lighting. Most certainly it’s one of the few movies based on J. M. Barrie’s original work that actually sticks to the original story fairly well. And with today’s opportunities in special effect technology, J. P. Hogan was able to truly bring to life Barrie’s world of fairies and pirates and alluring but treaturous mermaids.
The cast itself could not have been better chosen. Jeremy Sumpter and Rachel Hurd-Wood were absolutely perfect as Peter and Wendy. Both had such innocent faces and they were so easy to believe in their roles as being on the verge of something new but not quite reaching there — she wanting to make that next step and he never quite willing.
I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and I’ll be considering adding it to my permanent collection of DVDs. Peter Pan with all of it’s magic and fantasy and fairies, of course, has always been one of my favorite children’s stories and sometimes I still pull the book off my shelf and read about Wendy and Michael and John and Tinkerbelle. Such an age of innocence.
If only all of our problems could be so easily resolved by sword-fights and kisses and ticking crocodiles.
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on May 26, 2006 at 10:40 am
kacey said:
i love this movie it is the best, it is my favorite movie ever, i need to get this movie!!!!!