Pan

How many incarnations have we seen of the Peter Pan character? Let me count the ways: There's "Peter Pan" '24, "Peter Pan" 53 (animated), "Hook" '91, "Peter Pan" '03, "Finding Neverland" '04, plus scores of TV specials. So it was certainly no surprise that we have in our midst, "Pan" to continue that tradition.

Peter (Levi Miller) is a mischievous 12-year-old boy with an irrepressible rebellious streak, however in the WWII bleak London orphanage where he has lived his whole life, those qualities do not exactly fly well with the nuns that run it.
As Peter is whisked away from the orphanage to an enchanted land called Neverland to battle the fearsome pirate leader Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), with the help of the warrior woman Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) and Hook (Garrett Hedlund), he comes to realize his true destiny as the legend Peter Pan.
This incarnation being the beginnings of this character, it also gives us a glimpse of the beginnings of the likes of Hook, Smee and Tiger Lily, which is important in that it gives us a point of reference to hinge on so we know a bit more of where these different characters come from, as with other film's beginnings or origins.

Others to round out the cast are Adeel Akhtar as Sam 'Smee' Smiegel, Nonso Anozie as Bishop, Amanda Seyfried as Mary, Peter's mother, Kathy Burke as Mother Barnabas, Lewis MacDougall as Nibs, Cara Delevingne as Mermaids, Tae-joo Na as Kwahu, Jack Charles as Chief, Bronson Webb as Steps, Mike Shepherd as Fernley Trebilcock and Brian Bovell as Long John Standing.

This was tastefully and whimsically directed by Joe Wright ("Pride & Prejudice" '05, "Atonement" '07, "The Soloist" '09, "Hanna" '11, "Anna Karenina" '12). By his very resume, he chooses his projects carefully in that he presents his characters with delineated precision in order to convey this to his audience with just the right amount of pathos. It was written by a virtual newbie to theatrical films, Jason Fuchs ("Rags" (TV movie) '12, "Ice Age: Continental Drift" '12, "Big Thunder" (TV movie) '13), based on characters introduced by J.M. Barrie. If he was a seasoned writer, I would have a certain amount of disappointment of this, but considering this guy is relatively new at screenwriting, I have much more forgiveness. Hey, I've seen seasoned writers not produce any better a script, but that's not giving this writer much credit. I would love to see what he could do given more experience, and he will be given that chance, what with two more future films in the pre-production phase right now. Not to give much of this away, but there were too many holes in this of what's really going on, and assuming this makes the money the production companies are hoping for, maybe we'll see "Pan 2" down the road. Visually, this film was stunning and seamless--the majority of the visual effects were created by MPC (Moving Picture Company) and Framestore, but I can't help but think that if all this CGI imagery wasn't in this film, would it have kept the audience's attention because of just the storyline? You be the judge.

As I mentioned above, this having the creative visuals it has certainly is amazingly entertaining, and with the delicious characters in which Jackman, Mara and Hedlund played, all in a nifty 3D format, this just screams, break out the popcorn and enjoy.

Out of 4 Stars: 3                                Rated: PG                                    111mins.