Pan (2015)

RATING: D

Peter Pan has seen his fair share of time in the cinema; whether it's as the boy who wouldn't grow up or even occasionally a different showing of him, like in Steven Spielberg's Hook where he was an adult. This latest adaption shows him as a kid, per the normal usual; only now it's actually a prequel instead, showing *how* he got to Neverland. 

Again, per the usual, he's an orphan; and he's left at the worst orphanage ever, whose leader somehow seem to know about the pirates who come out of the sky now and then snatch kids away for their own purposes. Eventually, Peter is caught by a crew led by Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), who gives them liberty... and promptly takes it away by forcing them to mine for "fairy dust" or walk the plank. And guess what? When Peter accidentally flies, it turns out there's a prophecy of all things about him. And now he has to defeat Blackbeard so that Neverland can be a free place once again. Or something like that. 

What we're given here is a plot that's somewhat oddball at times, revealing a time in which Peter Pan and Hook were... buddies? What's even more odd is that here Hook is a complete rip-off of Han Solo (which can be mildly amusing at times, admittedly); and there's little here to compare him to the original character, except for a brief tease where an early fear of crocodiles is shown--*before* he's even lost his hand and thus gotten a hook. 

In fact, this movie is a classic case of "what could've been" regarding Hook. You wanna show us Pan and Hook being friends at one point, fine. But the problem is, they never bother to show us just how that friendship broke off. Were they planning on making a sequel? (Hopefully not.) But that could've actually been interesting, whether it was some misunderstanding or some betrayal or something like that. Might've made the film a little darker, and a dark twist was arguably what the film needed anyway. 

Besides an uninteresting plot, we are treated to a case of what happens when the CGI is overloaded. A scene in which Peter and Hook approach the natives is blotted with CGI colors that make little sense; there's also the CGI abominations that are the "Neverbirds" or whatever they're called; and there's also the poorly done flashback animation sequences. One that namely comes to mind is an underwater "memory" scene that almost left me more confused than before. 

There's not a whole like to particularly like about Pan. There's a couple of cool moments involving the flying ships battling each other (yeah, ships fly pretty much all the time in this tripped-out version of Neverland); and some parts of Hugh Jackman's over-the-top performance are amusing, but the whole film itself just isn't that interesting and the overdone CGI is pretty overwhelming, even by my standards (I can put up with a lot in that regard). It's not necessarily a straight-up painful film to watch, but it's not one to be recommended by any means either.