Review

Pan

Levi Miller plays Peter in Pan.
Levi Miller plays Peter in Pan.

Anybody wondering about the zeitgeist of the youth of England during the early 20th century need look no further than the popular children's literature that emerged from that period: Displaced kids sent out to the country to hide from the blitz who find a magical world inside a closet cabinet; an orphaned girl who discovers a secret garden along with a sickly cousin; a fantasia called Middle Earth roils under the siege of an evil sorcerer who seeks to find an all-consuming ring of power; and then, of course, we have a flying boy who is incapable of growing up. Orphans were popular protagonists; war and its bloody doings a common backdrop; and an ever-present threat, like a distant gray storm cloud, creeping closer and closer to the world the protagonists all inhabit.

It is from this sort of malaise that writer Jason Fuchs and director Joe Wright have attempted to fashion a prequel to the Peter Pan mythos. Set in a London orphanage during the blitz of 1940, Peter (Levi Miller) and his friend Nibs (Lewis MacDougall) endure the hostility of headmistress Mother Barnabas (Kathy Burke), and try to amuse themselves by solving the mystery of why their fellow comrades keep vanishing. Eventually, they too, are taken prisoner by pirate emissaries of the nefarious Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), who sends out flying pirate rigs from his domain in Neverland to keep the slave labor orphans in constant supply.

Pan

79 Cast: Levi Miller, Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Adeel Akhtar, Nonso Anozie, Amanda Seyfried, Kathy Burke, Lewis MacDougal, Cara Delevingne

Director: Joe Wright

Rating: PG, for fantasy violence, language and some thematic material

Running time: 111 minutes

Once there, Peter is forced to mine for Faerie Dust crystals, which, it turns out, help keep Blackbeard eternally young. He befriends the surly James Hook (Garrett Hedlund), currently two-handed, and concocts an escape plan with him that eventually takes him over the wall of Blackbeard's enclave into the deep tropical forests of Neverland.

The film shoots to be whimsical and high-energy, with odd bits of Baz Luhrmann-esque cultural incongruity thrown in for good measure -- when Peter first arrives at Blackbeard's lair, he's serenaded by thousands of orphans singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (and later "Blitzkrieg Bop"). When it actually takes time to draw a breath every odd moment or so, there is a stunning canvas to take in -- inky black stars hovering over the billowing sails of an ancient rig, shimmering underwater mermaids flitting through dimly lighted waters, the eternal dense green of the Neverland Forest -- but the film so rarely draws a breath, it's hard to appreciate the work that has gone into its art direction.

Exhaustively CGI-enhanced, Wright's camera can never sit still for a moment, swooping and lurching and sweeping over its computer-generated tableau. For all the time spent staring into Peter's liquid-blue eyes, we get so little feel for him or any of the other characters, they become further props to the film's insatiable demand of narrative thrust and movement. In an attempt to stave off a young audience's potential boredom, Wright goes so far in favor of flash and chase, he loses the soul of his characters.

Toying with the Pan canon -- giant crocodiles make an appearance, a ticking clock signals a bomb about to detonate, Hook makes frequent use of a hook-like knife down in the mines -- Wright wants to tease us with what we know is missing from this dubious origin story. Somehow, someway, Hook will lose his hand, gain a huge terror of said crocs, and vow eternal revenge on Peter's head, but that will doubtlessly be in what the producers hope will be the next installment of a continuing saga. Taking a page from the George Lucas school of fantasy trilogies, they have conjured up an unsatisfying answer to questions we probably didn't ask in the first place, and might have very well been better off not considering.

MovieStyle on 10/09/2015

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