77 min
7.223
1953
USA
Leaving the safety of their nursery behind, Wendy, Michael and John follow Peter Pan to a magical world where childhood lasts forever. But while in Neverland, the kids must face Captain Hook and foil his attempts to get rid of Peter for good.
Overview
Reviews
Kamurai wrote:Good watch, probably won't watch again, but can recommend for fans of Peter Pan that have seen other versions.
Wow, I feel as if I've never seen this movie before: this is something that happens when you learn to watch movies critically and rewatch childhood favorites.
I'm continuously enlightened to how awful Walt Disney was. This movie is filled with insensitive nonsense, particularly to Native Americans, and the majority of the characters are just awful people, to include Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. Wendy is the only "pure" character in the entire movie, and I feel as if I'm reaching there. Tiger Lily might be a competitor, but she doesn't DO much, so it's hard to tell.
With such a wonderful premise, and Disney's level of production value, you would think this would hold up, even after 70 years, but I honestly am beginning to think this was so widely accepted for a lack of options.
Don't get me wrong, the actual story is both "close enough" to the original story, and well enough structured that a reboot would probably be very close to this version. It's all stylistic choices in both animation, dialogue, and character presentation that could easily be cleaned up, and likely should have been.
While I could probably rant for an hour just on the "love" triangle happening in this (I am completely in camp Tinkerbell), this is supposed to be "boy who never grew up". While that lends to the jealousy factors, the amount and inconsistency of details on everything about the place being magical tends to distract from it.
You'll notice that Peter no longer has human ears, he has pixie ears, and the boys supposedly killed and skinned giant animals so they could wear their skins as pajamas: where are the rest of the animals?
The pirates have been there long enough to get restless, though there are enough of them left, despite Hook just shooting them dead on occasion, but not long enough to mutiny or properly search the one island, but long enough to have a weirdly specific history between Peter Pan and Hook and the crocodile.
It's a weird movie: it's still worth a watch, but I'd watch it with your kids as opposed to just on their own.
