Pan

            J.M. Barrie’s “Peter & Wendy” is a very iconic story with an iconic character. The tale of the boy who never grew up is remembered by generations of all kinds, in adaptations such as the 1953 Disney animated film, the 2003 live-action movie, the 1954 Broadway musical, the Spielberg film starring Robin Williams entitled “Hook,” and even the bio-pic, “Finding Neverland,” starring Johnny Depp.

            And much like any other iconic story, Hollywood will try to find ways to bank on it in some form or another. In this case, an origin story with Joe Wright, the director of “Hanna,” at the helm, and in the villain role is Hugh Jackman. Should be a fun time, right? No…no, it’s not.

            “Pan” is not only bad, it’s a complete fucking mess of a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. At one point, it’s “Oliver,” then it’s “Matilda,” then it becomes “Mad Max,” and then suddenly “Moulin Rouge.” There are so many stock archetypes and plot points thrown together into this film, you’ll be questioning whether or not any of the film makers had any idea of what they were doing. The over-arching plot is the clichéd messiah story: a child of prophecy comes into an ancient land, where he is destined to save everybody. If you’ve seen “Harry Potter,” “The Matrix,” “Avatar,” or any of the “Star Wars” movies, you have already seen this movie. And I know I’m somebody who doesn’t mind clichés as long as they are handled right, but this movie doesn’t, and that’s not a good thing.

            The acting is not only bad, it’s bizarre on several levels. Hugh Jackman plays Captain Blackbeard, the current leader of the pirates who kidnaps children, forces them into labor to dig up Pyxium and sing Nirvana and the Ramones…that last part, I didn’t make up. First off, what was up with Jackman’s performance? He’s portraying Blackbeard as if he was auditioning for Dr. Frank N. Furter from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” if he was a dictator. Second, why is he having his slaves sing Nirvana and the Ramones? At the beginning of this film, we’re in the middle of WWII in London, so what how would he even know what those songs were? And three…Pyxium? What, was “unobtanim” not available for you?

            Garrett Hedlund, who played Jeff Bridges’ son in “Tron: Legacy,” plays James Hook…and man, does he give the worst performance in the entire movie. He enunciates his words so damn much and in such an over-the-top accent that I couldn’t find it believable in any kind of regard. He acts as if Al Pacino was playing The Mask impersonating Indiana Jones, while sounding like a British guy doing a horrible American accent…can’t picture it? Well, now you know how I felt listening to it. Then we have Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, a casting choice that lead to an uproar of hatred towards Hollywood white-washing an iconic character. And yeah, it bothered me when I saw that she was the only white actress among the crowd of Native American extras, and finding out that Lupita Nyong’o was considered for the role pissed me off more. However, Mara’s casting wasn’t the worst part about this, but rather the way the character was written. Her only purpose in this film is to be exposition dump over things we could have easily figured out on our own, or stuff that’s being shown to us. This is a movie; show, don’t tell. In the end, you could have had anyone else play Tiger Lily and the character would still be awful. At least Mara tried her best to make this work, but trying and failing doesn’t get you much brownie points. There’s also this weird and unnecessary romance subplot between Hook and Tiger Lily, which feels so forced that it feels like they were just trying to pad out the movie out to 111 minutes.

            Now what about Peter Pan himself, played by Levi Miller? He’s boring. Seriously, throughout most of this fantasy adventure film, Peter just feels like a minor character in his own story. He has a couple moments like when he flips off one of the workers, but nothing else that makes him interesting or endearing enough for me to care about this kid. Same can be said for his friendship with Hook, which is filled to the brim with references to the story we know, and it gets really obnoxious. We know that they won’t become friends forever, we know Hook will lose his hand to the crocodile, why do we need these references all over the damn place?!

            The worst part about this film is the pacing, which is unbalanced as hell. For some reason, it feels as though the film makers have no idea how to let a scene flow naturally and instead rushes things to the next point on. One minute we’re told Peter has three days to learn how to properly fly (which is totally ripped off from “Hook”), and then after one night scene we see the pirates attack the Natives. Then we have a moment of Peter crying about Tiger Lily lying to him about his mother, and the next scene is them immediately in a boat with Peter not crying anymore.

            Did I mention that Amanda Seyfried and Cara Delevingne were in this movie? Yeah, Seyfried plays Peter’s mother, Mary, for the beginning scene where she leaves him on the doorstep of the orphanage…and that’s it. That’s the only scene in which Amanda Seyfried is in this movie, a role that could have been played by anybody else. As for Cara Delevingne, she plays the mermaids-oh wait, I mean her face is computer generated onto the mermaids, making her appearance in the film look fucking terrifying. And guess what? The scene with her serves no purpose.

            The action scenes and effects are average at best, but that doesn’t give the film a pass in any regard for that. Polish a turd all you want, it’s still a turd. It really disappoints me that Joe Wright, the director of “Hanna,” “Pride & Prejudice,” and “Atonement” could deliver such a pile of shit like this. Then again, seeing the name Greg Berlanti, the producer of “The Green Lantern,” attached to this should have been a warning. I think it’s best for Berlanti to stick to producing TV shows, because his film work does not have the same quality.

            Overall, “Pan” was just a complete mess. This year’s very definition of “clusterfuck.” So many confusing decisions, horrid pacing, horrible acting, and everything else in this film is just messy. It doesn’t surprise me that this film is bombing as badly as it is, and I highly doubt it’ll make its money back, unless someone’s really desperate for it when it comes out on DVD. Just stay home at watch any other adaptation of Peter Pan, because anything would be better than this crap.

Rating: 1/10