Review by Anne Garber

Brace yourselves: This is a lengthy review. And I should point out right at the beginning, that Peter Pan is definitely not a suitable film for young children (under the age of six, that is); during a recent preview, at least half a dozen youngsters broke into loud sobs and crying during the scary parts. And that's not the half of it.

Probably the largest audience demographic this production will attract will be teens and baby-boomers. The teens will find the action and effects quite gripping, while grown-ups will undoubtedly be transported back to their fond childhood memories of the book.

There is another important caution, however.

Given the controversy around the mounting of this production of Peter Pan a year ago in the U.K. -- "The god-daughter of Peter Pan creator James M. Barrie has castigated the Walt Disney Co. for its reported plans to produce a new 'adult' version of the children's classic in England, to be directed by P.J. Hogan (Muriel's Wedding, My Best Friend's Wedding) and star Jason Isaacs in the role of Captain Hook. Laura Duguid, whose father was adopted by Barrie, told the London Telegraph: 'It is a shame the play is being treated in this way. My father and Mr. Barrie would have been horrified. Mr. Barrie just was not interested in that sort of obvious sexuality and romance, and it certainly is not in the original story'." -- you would have thought most viewers would have been prepared for what this "Christmas release" is all about.

On the contrary, I -- for one -- was really taken aback by the blatant sexual innuendo of the script, or at least the undeniably sexual interpretation given to it by director P.J. Hogan.

On the other hand, this lavish production almost looks as though it were coloured by the hand of Maxfield Parrish, and certainly it has all the lush provenance one might expect from the eye of cinematographer Donald McAlpine (Moulin Rouge, Romeo and Juliet). It's a really beautiful film -- eye-candy in every interpretation of the expression.

Before I get into the deeper symbolism of this film, I have to give a nod to the casting, which is nothing short of miraculous. Not only do the Darling children look exactly as one might imagine them from a re-read of the original children's classic, but the elfin appearance of Peter Pan himself will forever supplant all previous pictures any reader will have drawn in his mind's eye for himself. This kid (Jeremy Sumpter) really is Peter Pan. (If you want to re-read the book online, click here for a complete version, free).

The set decoration is stupendous, and even the meticulous touches of dirt and grime and torn bits (and leafy bits) on costumes are unerring in their accuracy. Historically, the period (what little we see of London in the late 19th Century beyond rooftops) is portrayed in perfect detail, if slightly amplified (think Moulin Rouge) for the cinema.

Author Sir James M. Barrie's original concepts of growth, loss and the bittersweet beauties of life are kept intact, as is rather a surprising amount of the original dialogue -- word-for-word -- from his own stage-play version of the Peter Pan story. If anything is glossed over, it is the back-stories of each of the Lost Boys, but nothing is -- ahem -- lost in translation. The film differs greatly from other adaptations of Peter Pan, which was written in 1904, at the height of Edwardian prudery. And like all works from periods of severe repression, it is teeming with unspoken passions of every sort.

The great controversy of this particular interpretation of Peter Pan stems from that moment for children on the very cusp of adolescence, when they realize there is something much more to life than play and schoolbooks; it is fascinating and frightening, and most viewers have at least a vague, visceral memory of it in their own lives. But here's where the interpretation of all that is "Peter Pan" takes a sharp turn from the acceptable, at least in the view of many who have already seen this film.

Assume that all the Freudians and Jungians are correct: The child-as-mother, child-as-father, father-as-seducer and homo-erotic interpretations of every relationship in the Peter Pan story are exactly as we fear. Imagine that children do have highly charged sexual urges and that all lines of taboo, incest and fantasy may be crossed. Remember that furor many years ago when a large-format picture book showing children posed in sexual postures was published? Liberal thinkers are not offended by erotic fantasies between children. It's only leering sexual innuendo from an adult (Hook) to a child (Wendy) that draws our ire. And why? Because the children do not really know what they're getting into. If they are two children together, we forgive them their naïveté (which we might actually find charming), because they are novices. But adults are supposed to understand such flirtations and nuances. Hence the anger at Michael Jackson's shenanigans; it isn't that we judge him guilty of child molesting, it's just that we think he should understand that grown-ups do not sleep in the same beds as children, even if so doing is completely innocent.

So understanding -- acknowledging -- that something is going on is an enormous part of flirtation, seductiveness, innuendo. And one reason we allow this between children is because they actually are on the cusp. On the cusp of adolescence, they do not yet know or understand the complicated feelings they are experiencing. Or the consequences or inevitability of where their coyness might take them.

Now, with all that said, you just have to see this movie to believe it. What passes between the two children playing Wendy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) and Peter (Jeremy Sumpter) is as hot a stream of barely suppressed emotion as one could ever imagine! The sexual tension is almost palpable; one feels very nearly like a voyeur watching the story unfold.

To back it up a bit, imagine an 11-year-old (but very composed for her age) Nicole Kidman, and a same-aged, um, let's say David Cassidy, back in the early, early days of the Partridge Family.
Dress these two in the skimpiest of clothing -- actually, put her into a nightgown, and set them down in a magical wood all alone, except for the swirling fairy dust in the air and the scent of danger and discovery all around them in the night. Whew! Get the picture?

And I'll tell you, if Nicole and Tom ever had this degree of on-screen chemistry, they'd be together still in real life, because it's Box Office, baby!

Will they kiss? Won't they? You can almost inhale the dense pheromones wafting through the mossy patches on which Wendy and Peter are reclining. An audience hasn't been this moved in anticipation of a physical connection -- that might or might not happen -- since that staggering, knee-weakening upside-down osculation in Spider-Man. And these are kids for heaven's sake! (By the way, this is the first live-action version of the story with a young boy playing the lead role.)





P.J. Hogan has done a superb job of melding a full panoply of challenging adult emotional truths and chaste childish delights. Despite the awesome sets, Peter Pan also manages to remain faithful to the format, pacing and even elocution of the stage play. The script balances the themes with a touch of magic, adhering to Barrie's works quite loyally (verbatim at times, as I mentioned), while infusing the whole with wit, wisdom and canny observation. This is not a trite Hollywood showpiece to be viewed as mere spectacle. But as I said, not strictly "family fare," either.

Central here is the fact that this tale, of the boy who won't -- or can't -- become a man, or understand what it would mean to grow up, is at best a bittersweet one. This Peter Pan isn't a nice safe ten-year-old -- or really a tomboy girl -- he's teetering on the edge of sexual maturity. . .and desperately avoiding it. He wants a pal, and he wants a mom, and he wants something else . . . but he's not quite sure what it is.

At its origins, this is a tale for both children and adults, and in important ways it's about sexuality and maturity. It's a story told by a woman, who has grown up, and is no longer a girl, about a boy who will never become a man. The epilogue, with the still-vain, un-learning, un-remembering, un-feeling Peter Pan, never growing up and slowly fading from the maturing Wendy's life, is important and moving, and Sumpter makes his Peter just the right mix of incipient male charm and what Barrie observantly called "innocent and heartless" childishness.

As it happens, this is the first live-action film version of the story with sound. The Mary Martin versions (1955, 1956, and 1960) were preserved on kinescope and videotape, all for television, and the 1976 Mia Farrow version was also shown on television in videotape format (though it features the same characters and setting, Hook -- 1991 -- was not a version of "Peter Pan").

Following tradition (in both theatre and film), the actor portraying Captain Hook is the same actor portraying Mr. Darling (Wendy's father). In this case, it's Jason Isaacs. Isaacs masters the demanding and complex dual roles of the milque-toast Mr. Darling and the dangerous, sexually predatory and handsome Captain Hook. So contrary are these portrayals that if you didn't understand Barrie's tradition of casting the same actor for both roles, you might not recognize him. His George Darling and James Hook are divergent yet deeply connected roles, again harkening back to all the symbolic interpretations you might ever wish to attribute to them.

The executive producer of this film was Mohamed Al-Fayed, and as the film is "Dedicated to the Memory of Dodi Al-Fayed" -- a fact that many in the audience will miss in the roll-up of the credits in the rush to leave the theatre -- one imagines that this might have been one of the many film productions in which Dodi himself dabbled prior to his death. It's somewhat ironic that the paparazzi once deemed responsible for the car crash that killed Al-Fayed and Princess Diana were only recently acquitted of any complicity in their deaths (and from having benefited financially from pictures taken at the crash site). This fact alone must have enraged "Daddi" Al-Fayed no end, so with the release of this film, he now has a whole new crop of people (in addition to the Royal Family) angry at him.

The controversy over the "sexing up" of Peter Pan will also embarrass Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, which was given the literary rights to Peter Pan by Barrie in 1929, and which stands to receive a share of the profits from the production. However, it long ago approved the new script.

With all the palaver about making Peter Pan into an adult-themed film, this is still a rockin' date movie, with enough blood-and-gore, action, love, lust and romance to please everyone.

And girls, if you want to compare your Guy Who Won't Commit to the Pan-Boy, you will certainly find plenty of "evidence" to support your theories in the movie Peter Pan. Yes, there is a Peter Pan in all of them, and the truth is that very few of them ever want to grow up. Or ever do.