Hook

Curse that school project that made me watch this film. Why did I have to pick Peter Pan as a subject for my thesis paper on adaptations? Why?

Okay, let us begin. First we start at a school play of none other than Peter Pan where we are supposed to believe that the annoying actress playing Wendy is stealing the show. I wonder how bad all the other kids are.  Her family, that consists of a mother, father and brother, are in the audience and her father gets a call on his cell. He left his cell on during his daughter's play? Talk about bad parenting. Anyway the dad, Peter (Robin Williams) has an important meeting he needs to attend. Unfortunately he's leaving for London the next day, so he sacrifices his son's baseball game to go to the meeting. It didn't really matter, the kid lost anyway. The four of them jump on a plane and head to London, where Jack, (Charlie Korsmo) takes a stab at drawing and shows the plane going down in flames. I think that will get you a full cavity search nowadays.

When they finally land in London there's plenty of tension in the family, especially after Peter gets a call that the deal he was working on fell through, something about fornicating owls (...?) and yells at his kids. Moira (Caroline Goodall), Peter's wife gets all angry, but come on lady the kids were crawling on top of him while he was on the phone. When I was younger I was considerate enough  to wait until my parents got off the phone before I mauled them as these two children should know. They're not four. 

Anyway Peter and Moira and Grandma Wendy (Maggie Smith) go to a banquet where Wendy is being honored for helping the orphans. This is where we learn that Peter was also an orphan, after the usual jokes at the expense of lawyers. If it was old back then, imaging how tacky lawyer jokes are now.  When they return home, they discover that Jack and Maggie (Amber Scott) have been kidnapped by the evil Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). Wendy then explains to Peter that he is really Peter Pan, not Peter Panning. I can see where he gets confused. She tells him to go to Never Land to rescue his children. After hearing this get promptly gets drunk and is visited by Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts...man I hate Julia Roberts). After trying to kill the firefly from hell, she wraps him up in a blanket and drags his sorry ass to Never Land.

Then she drops him in the middle of pirates. Great aim there bug. After confronting Captain Hook and failing to rescue his kids, Hook is all ready to kill them all, but instead he is convinced by Tinker Bell to give her 3 days to turn him back into Peter Pan.  She then leads him to the Lost Boys, now lead by Rufio (Dante Basco). They go from trying to kill him to try and play basket ball with him, then believing he is Peter and decide to help him.

At the other end of the island...well more like five minutes away, Hook is about to kill himself, realizing that his adversary is no longer who he thought he was. He is stopped by Smee (Bob Hoskins) who has a brilliant plan: get Pan's kids to love Hook. We are then forced to watch the Lost Boys trying to get Pan back into shape while Hook tries to win over the kids. He fails with Maggie, but since Jack is all angst-y he falls for Hook's psycho-babble.

Peter starts to relearn his ways when they have an invisible dinner and a name calling contest with Rufio. After he goes to rescue Jack and Maggie only to see Jack playing baseball with the pirates and Hook calling him son. Peter returns to the Lost Boys' tree and tries to fly, only to fail. His shadow then leads him into the tree where he used to live and finds his happy thoughts, which are his children.

The Lost Boys get all armed up with marble guns, water guns, egg guns candies apple arrows and head to the pirate' ship. Peter goes to rescue Jack, but the kid doesn't remember him anymore. There is a big fight between the Lost Boys and the Pirates where Rufio dies on Hook's sword but Peter eventually wins with the help of a dead crocodile. He leaves the fat Lost Boy in charge for no other reason than he returned Tootles' (Arthur Malet) marbles and goes back to London, actually Newfoundland, because that where the statue he landed under is: St. John's, Newfoundland. Anyway, he's in London with his family and they all live happily ever after. Even Tootles, who gets his marbles back and goes off flying to Never Land, or into the engine of a passing 747. Whichever.

This was a cheesy, tacky, crappy movie. The only good things about it were Robin William, Captain Hook, Rufio, and all the little things in in from the original play.  That's about it. The kids were annoying, the Lost Boys were annoying, the fight scene were terrible. I mean, the Lost Boys kill pirates, so they go to war with eggs and marbles? Does that make sense to anyone? Anyone at all? Didn't think so. Julia Roberts was awful, but what else is new? Why was there a scene about Tinker Bell growing big and falling in love with Peter. What?! That made no sense at all. You know in the original play no one but Peter understood what Tink was saying. I miss that.

Anyway, most of this movie was pointless garbage, that totally went against Barrie's work.  I could go one for a lot more, but I really don't want to.

Grade: 4.5/10