Review: The entertaining ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ charts a familiar course to Neverland

In 2016, writer-director David Lowery’s remake of the 1977 family film “Pete’s Dragon” offered an unexpected and welcome upgrade to a mid-tier Disney picture, converting the material into something with more nuanced characters and visual richness, befitting Lowery’s arthouse roots. Since then, Lowery has returned to smaller-budgeted personal projects like “A Ghost Story” and “The Green Knight” — each about as un-Disney-like as movies can be.

So perhaps the biggest surprise of Lowery’s return to Disney for “Peter Pan & Wendy” is that he and co-writer Toby Halbrooks don’t reimagine the material that much. The mission here seems to be to take J.M. Barrie’s perennially popular play “Peter and Wendy” and Disney’s 1953 animated classic “Peter Pan” and merge them into the best-looking, least-challenging version of this story.

Alexander Molony in the movie “Peter Pan & Wendy.”

(Eric Zachanowich / Disney+)

That’s not necessarily a bad goal, given that Barrie’s original remains a favorite for a reason: It imbues a simple adventure plot with deeper subtext. Once again in this version, Wendy Darling (Ever Anderson) is on the cusp of becoming a young lady — and aging out of the family playroom — when she receives an invitation from the storybook character Peter Pan (Alexander Molony) to join him in Neverland, where he and all the other “Lost Boys” who refuse to grow up battle the sour pirate Captain Hook (Jude Law). Throw in a rapacious crocodile, the loyal fairy Tinkerbell (Yara Shahidi), and the very loaded question of whether Wendy wants to play Mommy to a bunch of rowdy kids, and you’ve got all you need for a timeless crowd-pleaser.

Lowery and Halbrook do tweak some things. Captain Hook’s rivalry with Peter Pan is given a thornier, more involved backstory. The Indigenous princess Tiger Lily (Alyssa Wapanatâhk) is no longer the pulp fiction stereotype of the Disney cartoon. Wendy has a lot more agency, wielded with a feminist edge; and she and Tinkerbell are no longer rivals. Reactionaries who rush to the internet to complain about progressive ideas sneaking into popular culture may be outraged; but for the most part, this is the “Peter Pan & Wendy” everyone is used to.

Jude Law in the movie “Peter Pan & Wendy.”

(Eric Zachanowich / Disney+)

Visually, the movie is a mixed bag. Lowery and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli follow the frustrating trend in Disney live-action remakes toward keeping the image dim, as though the whole picture were shot during a solar eclipse. But Lowery does know how to frame and block scenes in eye-catching ways; and there are moments of real wonder here not copied directly from Barrie or Disney.

When Wendy and her brothers John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe) are passing into Neverland for the first time, they hang suspended between worlds for a few seconds in a poetic shot evoking the heavy barriers between childhood and adulthood. Later, Wendy’s potential post-Neverland life flashes before her eyes in a thoughtful montage that signals a shift in the film’s theme from “Wouldn’t it be great to stay a kid forever?” to “Maybe growing up won’t be so bad.”

It’s a shame there aren’t more “wow” moments like this in “Peter Pan & Wendy,” because Lowery is certainly capable of them. The movie is entertaining and has a professional polish; but it’s also very safe. It feels like it was made more for the Darling children’s parents, not the Lost Boys.