I love the original Peter Pan and even the sequel, Return to Never Land is not bad, heck, Peter Pan’s Flight is still one of my favorite rides at Disneyland Paris! I came into Peter Pan & Wendy with the best of intentions and a lot of hope that this would be a good live-action reimaging of a Disney classic!
How to Download Peter Pan & Wendy
You can download or stream the film from Disney+. Click on the Download button at the end of this review.
The Movie Review
However, by the time the movie ended, I was left with a real feeling of “What was the point of that?” Do not take that as me saying, Peter Pan & Wendy is a bad movie, it is not at all. However, it is a very average and forgettable movie and movie that if I am being 100 percent honest would not be in a rush to watch again.
I think a huge part of the problem is that this movie plays it way too safe. It is a very, very similar retelling of the classic Disney Peter Pan story. We have Wendy, John, and Michael living with their parents in London. Wendy is about to be sent away to boarding school, but Wendy does not want to grow up and has to move away to boarding school.
Peter Pan has heard Wendy’s wish and he along with Tinkerbell comes to take her to Never Land so that she never has to grow up. I think the scene where The Darlings, Peter, and Tink travel to Never Land is really cool and at this point in the movie, I was enjoying it and I still had high hopes.
The thing is, Peter Pan & Wendy never gets out of first gear. They of course run into Hook and his crew, The Lost Boys, and everything else you would expect to happen. I guess in one way, it is cool how they tried to keep this as close to the original Disney movie as possible and I am sure some people will like that.
I will say that there was one thing I did think was interesting and that was the way it looked into the past relationship with Peter and Hook, I would have liked to have seen more of this. Actually, I think Disney may have something here and this could be a movie in itself if they wanted to.
To be fair, the cast is great here. Young, Ever Gabo Anderson as Wendy is great (she is the daughter of Mila Jovovich and Paul W.S Anderson) and I am sure she has a bright future. Jude Law as Hook is a lot of fun and the most charming of all is Noah Matthews Matofsky who is the first actor with Down syndrome to be in a Disney movie
While I think that Wendy was good, I have to say that I felt that Alexander Molony as Peter never really lit up the screen. To be fair, he is a million miles better than the kid who was Peter Pan in that god-awful 2015 Pan movie. Yet I feel that he never grabbed you as Peter Pan did in the original animated Peter Pan movie.
I have to say that Peter Pan & Wendy is not a bad movie, but it is certainly a very average (at best) movie. There were some things that I did enjoy about the movie, but for the most part, it just kind of fell flat. I would not put this in my top five Disney live action remakes that is for sure.
