MOVIE REVIEW | 'Peter Pan' Characters, special effects create Neverland that meets expectations

The actors are what makes this film work so well.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
It's not until Peter and those irrepressible Darling kids trip the light fantastic while bouncing on some positively scrumptious-looking cotton candy clouds that the magic in "Peter Pan," P.J. Hogan's lushly appointed new version of J.M. Barrie's beloved kid-lit classic, kicks in. Until then, hocus-pocus of any kind is conspicuously absent.
Sure, thanks to the wonders of 21st-century computer-generated imagery, the legendary boy who refuses to grow up can indeed fly without the aid of any theatrical ropes or wires (although he still looked too much like "Spider-Man" for my taste). But, as anyone who's seen a big-budget Hollywood movie lately can tell you, cinematic miracles are easy if you've got enough money. The hard part is generating awe and wonder. That's why Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy will live forever -- they're among the only truly fantastical fantasy films ever made.
Sluggish pace
Instead of wonderment, the thing I noticed most about this new "Pan," at least in those magic-challenged early scenes, was how sluggishly paced it felt and how creaky Hogan made its all-too-familiar plot seem. While I secretly prayed that Hogan wouldn't infuse Barrie's 99-year-old tale with the same campy sensibility that sparked his best-known films, "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "Muriel's Wedding," I certainly wasn't expecting his "Pan" to be quite this humorless or devoid of fun either.
I was so bored in fact that it even got me thinking about the unspoken link between Peter Pan and Count Dracula. Both prey on innocents in Victorian England and make their entrances through bedroom windows. And both Pan and Drac offer the promise of eternal life: one through bloodsucking and the other via his pal Tinker Bell's pixie dust. Sorta creepy, huh?
Magical moments
You can imagine my relief then when those silky puffballs of shocking pink finally turned up. From there it was just a hop, skip and jump to the enchanted realm of Neverland, and the action never lets up. This is that rare instance where a movie actually improves as it goes along. The escapades with Captain Hook (a splendidly villainous Jason Isaacs) and his salty crew of seafaring buccaneers are more robustly entertaining than they were in Disney's overstuffed "Pirates of the Caribbean." Peter's endearing squad of Lost Boys are everything you could hope for in clubhouse cronies, and Hogan even gets away with introducing a romantic connection between Peter and Wendy that feels just about right.
There are oodles of special effects here, although not everything is up to the exacting standards of those fabulous clouds. Hook's animatronic peg-legged parrot is shockingly fake. Some of Neverland's foliage looks a little too plastic and rubbery -- more like an attraction at Universal Studios Orlando than an actual jungle. And pixie sprite Tink (Ludivine Sagnier, the nymphet from "Swimming Pool") is more French can-can girl than fairy.
The main reason this spotty, but still worthwhile, "Peter Pan" works as well as it does, though, is the actors. Jeremy Sumpter, the only American in a mostly British cast, makes Peter appealingly boyish. Isaacs does splendid double-duty as the dastardly Hook and a wimpy Mr. Darling. Twelve-year-old Rachel Hurd-Wood is simply the best Wendy I've seen in any "Pan" production.
Harry Newell and Freddie Popplewell are so good as John and Michael, Wendy's impish little brothers, that I hope the J.K. Rowlings estate takes notice and signs them to replace Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint when they finally outgrow the Harry and Ron roles in the "Potter" movie franchise.
XWrite Milan Paurich at milanpaurich@aol.com.