Pan Review Roundup: Like 2003’s Peter Pan, 2015’s Origin Story Film “May Be Headed for a Low-Altitude Flight”

Everyone knows the story of Peter Pan, but how exactly did the boy who refused to become a man end up in Neverland in the first place? Pan, in theaters today, answers that very question.

In the Warner Bros. Pictures movie (rated PG), director Joe Wright introduces audiences to 12-year-old orphan Peter (Levi Miller), who is determined to find his mother Mary (Amanda Seyfried) in the mysterious land. He befriends James Hook (Garrett Hedlund) and Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara), and together, they must save Neverland from the ruthless pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman). Along the way, Peter must fulfill his destiny to become the hero forever known as Peter Pan.

Pan also stars Adeel Akhtar as Mr. Smee, Jack Charles as Chief Great Little Panther, Cara Delevingne as the mermaids, Lewis MacDougall as Nibs, Na Tae-joo as Kwahu, among others. The movie was written by Jason Fuchs and produced by Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Paul Webster.

Here’s what critics are saying about Pan:

• “In possession of a title that, for many critics, will undoubtedly seem like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Pan hatches an entirely unnecessary origin story for a wonderful tale that has already been held up to the light from many different angles,” The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy writes. “Oddly repositioning Peter Pan’s emergence to the World War II era and employing a barrage of sophisticated special effects to produce no magic nearly as enchanting as Tinkerbell flickering back to life in the musical stage version, this strenuous undertaking was obviously made in the hope that the global audience has an unending appetite for anything set in Neverland. But just as P.J. Hogan‘s similarly grandiose and Peter Pan surprisingly flopped in 2003, this one may also be headed for a low-altitude flight.”

• “Of all the recent big-budget studio films to re-imagine beloved children’s tales as garish, CGI-choked sensory overloads stripped of all whimsy or childlike wonder, Joe Wright’s Pan is certainly the most technically sophisticated. The director displays his typical formal virtuosity and keen eye for young talent here…but it’s not enough to enliven the depressing dourness of the film’s worldview,” Variety‘s Andrew Barker writes. “Positioned as a prequel to J.M. Barrie‘s classic Peter Pan stories, Pan swaps puckish mischief and innocence for doses of Steampunk design, anachronistic music, a stock ‘chosen one’ narrative and themes of child labor, warfare and unsustainable mineral mining.” Miller “is bright-eyed, engaging and empathetic, eschewing kid-actor cuteness for genuine camera presence,” and Mara, “although miscast, is one of the film’s few adult performers resisting the temptation to play to the third balcony.” In contrast, Jackman “never finds an appropriate balance between humor and menace; his villain is just annoying and creepy, while Hedlund seems to be channeling the most overbearing moments of James Coburn and Jack Nicholson.”

• “Pan is, for the most part, ugly to look at, shrill to listen to, and performed by actors who have been encouraged to camp it up madly in the style usually favored by aging British sitcom stars playing storybook characters in Christmas panto productions,” The Wrap’s Alonso Duralde writes. “Even worse, it’s a prequel-slash-origin-story, which means that plot-wise, the compass can point in only one direction.” While Miller “deserves no blame for this catastrophe,” Pan “winds up wallowing in two of the current cinema’s most tired storylines: the Chosen One/Reluctant Messiah and the Boy Who Must Learn To Believe in Himself. Ugh.”

• The New York Times‘ A.O. Scott calls Pan “a hectic and labored attempt to supply the boy who never grew up with an origin story.” In spite of its pedigree, he says, “There is enough going on in in Pan to fill several movies, most of which you’ve already seen and perhaps enjoyed under other titles. There are mermaids and ships to remind you of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and a dreamy landscape populated by virtuous animists that recalls Avatar.” Hook “is a Han Solo type with an Indiana Jones hat and an odd Jimmy Stewart way of talking.” Peter has “a vaguely Potteresque messiah complex, and subjected to a lot of talk about prophecies and chosenness. Blackbeard rules over a dusty hellhole swarming with enslaved children, the kind of place we’ve seen a hundred times before.”

• “Modern music in fantasy films can be like a shot of pheromones, but when 10,000 child slaves ecstatically sing Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in Pan, the song’s satirical lyrics (‘Here we are now, entertain us!’) make an already gauche movie even dorkier,” Entertainment Weekly‘s Joe McGovern writes. “Who in the world was crying out for a prequel to Peter Pan?” Jackman, at least, “gives the movie a bit of twinkle as a pirate who breathes pixie dust to stay fresh and relevant.”