The idea behind Hook is very provocative. Everyone who’s known the Peter Pan story has wondered what would happen to the title character if he left Neverland and grew up. His immortal youth was very appealing when we were children, but there are rich facets to the Peter Pan character worth exploring, and a movie operating under the premise of him as an adult is a great way to do that. Steven Spielberg’s Hook was that film that made the attempt.
Hook may be the only cult classic of Spielberg’s career. It’s not one of his most famous movies, performed only modestly at the box office, and critically wasn’t received all that well –even he’s not too fond of it. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who grew up in the nineties who didn’t see it and love it as a kid. Nostalgia of course is a strong opponent to critical thinking, and Hook is one of the most frequent winners in the former regard.
But the story isn’t quite airtight. After having left Neverland when he fell in love with Wendy Darlings’ (Maggie Smith) granddaughter and subsequently forgot about his true identity growing up adopted by Americans, Peter Banning (Robin Williams) is a corporate lawyer with no sense of fun and no time for his family. While visiting Wendy in London, his children are kidnapped by Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman), and Peter is forced to confront his true past and neglectful attitude in order to save them.
As far as the concept of a grown-up Peter Pan goes, there are better stories that could be told than the one Hook presents us with. There are a lot of possibilities inherent in the idea and this film tackles one of the more mundane options. Not a lot has changed in Neverland since Peter’s absence and Peter himself has no depth applied to his prolonged childhood. That being said, for its particular take, Hook does pretty well, even through balancing lacklustre plot points with fascinating ones. Bringing Peter’s children to Neverland is really interesting, but making Peter a joyless workaholic father is not -in fact it pre-emptively embitters the audience towards him. Peter having to learn all over again the power of imagination and remember a forgotten past is a great idea, but an arc where he has to learn to be a better father feels pretty trite. And the digressions into the typical plot beats that go along with this can be tiresome, if not badly executed. It’s not as overplayed to the extent of similar movies (its recent imitator Christopher Robin comes to mind), but the scenes emphasizing Peter’s absentee parenting are the movies’ weakest by far. However it is worth thinking about why this whole theme is there. Once again, Spielberg is reflecting on his own childhood relationship with his father, but even more so he’s working through a self-conscious sense of distance to his own family. Like Peter, Spielberg’s work often kept him apart from his young family for weeks at a time, perhaps even missing important milestones in his childrens’ lives. There is an irony in how his means of coping with being away from his family on film sets was to make another film about this very situation undoubtedly keeping him once more away from his family on a film set. But his interest in exploring one of his contemporary insecurities is significant, even if that exploration is rather shallow.
By his own admission, Spielberg wasn’t satisfied with the middle of the movie, and compensated with elaborate sets and art design. And they are indeed wonderful and impressive. The movies’ visuals are one of its strongest assets, from these sets and mattes (which don’t look quite real, but by god are they pretty), to the costuming. And I think Spielberg is perhaps being too harsh on himself here. The film doesn’t start to get interesting until the children are kidnapped, and once Peter is in Neverland it allows itself, and the audience, to have fun. The fish-out-of-water moments are actually really entertaining. There are some good jokes in Hook shooting through Peter’s checkbook, and his cutting response to Peter’s request to “lend him a hand”. And each actor is giving it their all, from Robin Williams’ annoyed befuddlement, to Bob Hoskins’ jovial enthusiasm, to Dustin Hoffman hamming it up as perhaps the greatest Captain Hook ever put to film. Even Julia Roberts, who had a tumultuous relationship with Spielberg on set, has been unfairly criticized for playing Tinker Bell in her usual girl-next-door screen persona. But it’s a persona that works just fine for the character and she’s not bad at all.
When Peter’s with the Lost Boys, the humour’s not quite as clever, but it’s still thoroughly enjoyable thanks in large part to the creative and energetic tone, and Dante Basco’s commanding performance as Rufio, the Lost Boys’ leader. Yeah, Rufio is to some degree an 80s teen stereotype complete with punk affectations, but he’s remembered for Basco’s effortless charisma, agility, and remarkable ability to give dramatic weight to even the cheesiest of lines. There are bizarre moments for sure, such as Peter’s interaction with the mermaids and the feast of imagination being just a little too cute and nonsensical even for this kind of a film, however the charm of Neverland is captured rather well for the limitations the filmmakers had. Only when Hook starts trying to indoctrinate the kids to his side does it get pedantic, not helped by script inefficiencies and the unusually bad child acting for a Spielberg film.
Spielberg also underestimates how well the atmosphere of Peter Pan comes through in the production values, performances, and music. Even if the story may sound underwhelming as a sequel to the adventures, it doesn’t feel like it. This is especially the case when Peter finally remembers how he got to Neverland, and why he decided to leave it and grow up. It’s presented in fragments of flashbacks that have the dreamy air of distant memory to them, so we get small references to Peter and Wendy and The Little White Bird (notice too, Peter’s shadow is clearly from the Disney film). And though the answer to the big why question the movies’ premise asks is contrived, the emotional climax it produces is fantastic. Peter’s flight is rightfully earned and when he rouses the Lost Boys with his rooster crow, he takes on the power of a mythic hero. As silly as it may be out of context, he is Peter Pan in that moment, no matter how old he is. What’s more, it’s not just whimsical nostalgic manipulation; the movie is genuinely heartwarming in scenes like these and reminds you of the magic of the original story, recapturing it to a point along the way. And Robin Williams absolutely understands this, taking incredible joy in rekindling Peter’s adventurous spirit and childish glee.
Though very fun in places, the last act goes on too long, particularly the battle sequence with the pirates -full of spells of unnecessary padding such as Peter’s son Jack beginning to forget his family, the death of Rufio, and Hook’s mock surrender. Hook is two and a half hours long, and definitely doesn’t need to be. This length, like the closeness of the sets, the staging of select sequences, and the style of the score, I suspect to be a remnant of Hook’s early stage concept as a musical. John Williams had even written a number of songs for it that were subsequently adapted into orchestral pieces. But Peter’s daughter Maggie still has has a song –a lullaby; and there are more than a few suggestions by the underscoring and choreography of where song sequences were. It’s very easy to see the Lost Boys breaking out into a West Side Story or Newsies style number for example.
Perhaps Spielberg was so focussed on his own reservations with the script and plot of Hook that he missed his cast and crew making the most of these perceived shortcomings. If he lost interest, they evidently didn’t. Insofar as taking classic established elements of the tale and expounding on them in a new context, Hook doesn’t achieve much. But what it does achieve is a compelling idea supported by a real fascination with the material and well-realized characters. It’s not one of Spielberg’s great movies, but it is a good movie, and a worthy addendum to the Peter Pan story.
It’s clear however that Spielberg had had enough of the entirely practical sets and effects; and as if to retaliate against his critics who took issue with their abundance in this film, he would make motion picture history with CGI in his next.
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