Followup

OK, so I've had a couple of hours to think about the 2003 Peter Pan, as errands I had on my schedule this morning turned into an hours-long wild goose chase which led to me sitting in the Farragut North Starbucks, nursing a tall hot chocolate for an hour and a half while reading about the history of Yiddish theatre. (The things I read for fun... :) )

So, here's the thing. I thought I'd have a problem with Peter being played by a boy. Turns out, I do not. In the medium of film, when there are closeups and more verity than one can show on the stage, I like the fact that Peter can be played by a boy, especially one as androgynous as the boy in this film. I could even forget the fact that he was obviously American, since I really did like his performance.

I liked what they did with Tinkerbell. They didn't princess her up (don't even get me started on the new Disney Tinkerbell straight-to-video), they left her a sexy little shrew who showed real affection for Peter, and real disregard for anything else.

I liked that Tiger Lily appeared to be Native American, and not whitewashed, and, if imdb is correct, even spoke a line in a Iroquois dialect.

I didn't even mind most of the changes to the script. I did, however, mind the added scenes. A scene at the beginning showing Wendy at school and Mr. Darling at work were thoroughly unnecessary. The two realms of Peter Pan are, and should stay, the home and Never Land. The audience is never meant to know exactly what Mr. Darling does for a living, just like children are never quite sure what their parents do when they leave the house. We don't need to see Wendy being a feisty, headstrong girl at school, because she shows us in her respectful but commanding relationship with her brothers and parents. We don't need to see Nana trotting the Darling children through the streets like a real nursemaid because she is not a nursemaid, she's a dog. Mr. Darling doesn't like Nana as a nursemaid for just this reason, that she's a dog and not a proper maid, not because she screwed up some transaction with a banker higher-up.

My other nitpick is in Peter's first conflagration with Hook, after he rescues John, Michael, and Tiger Lily from the pirates early on: I want to see a build in Peter's relationship with Hook, not a face-to-face battle during their first meeting.

Also: I love Lynn Redgrave, but who the hell is Aunt Milicent? Why get rid of the child-maid Liza? The fact that middle-class Wendy, John, and Michale are allowed to have fantasies of Never Land and lower-class Liza is left to her work, just barely able to be a child and sneak into the fantasy world is one of my favorite pieces of covert social commentary in the original. I have to admit, I missed Liza.

I loved the fact that Hook had an Eton tattoo on his shoulder. James Hook is an Eton boy and proud of it.

The performances were good, all around, particularly that of Jason Isaacs, who does double-duty as Hook and Mr. Darling. I enjoyed watching the flick, but, I guess as happens to any piece of text one lives with for years, I found it a little lacking in places.