I was intrigued by the idea of this, as there can be so much to unpack from J. M> Barrie's original Peter Pan. However, this particular variant is unevenly scripted, erratically directed, and even more poorly acted--all by the same individual Livia de Paolis. What could have been a fascinating psychomachia of sexual awakening, gender expectations, mental illness, and family, falls far short of the mark.
This adaptation of Laurie Fox's novel skips a generation - it is Margaret who is Wendy II's mother rather than Jane (which in the original Barrie timeline makes sense, as Wendy was late Victorian/Edwardian; Jane was during WWII; Margaret would have been c. 1960s-70s; Wendy II: 1980s; and Berry c. 2010s). In Fox's novel, it is Wendy II grandmother Jane that goes missing, thereby bestowing the trauma of an absent mother on Margaret, who then inflicted her own traumas onto Wendy II. The removal of Margaret from de Paolis' adaptation makes the mystery and trauma both more immediate and more rushed in feeling (although this could be the result of a grossly inexperienced writer/director/actor in de Paolis), where Wendy II copes by writing letters to herself as if from her MIA mother as a child, but as an adult has borderline psychotic breaks that seem to come from nowhere.
De Paolis' accented English (presumably from Italian) immediately marks her as the cuckoo in the nest, where the younger iterations of the character have no such indicator. Furthermore, it seems that de Paolis is working from an entirely different set of motives/objectives than the rest of the cast, where adult Wendy experiences some kind of cognitive disorder that also never appears in her younger self or is explained. Furthermore, while a key aspect is the absences of Wendy II's mother Jane, this abandonment seems to impact adult Jane more than her younger self, enough so her own motherhood becomes a significant hurdle.
Iain Glen is sufficiently creepy as Hook; however, de Paolis is rather heavy handed when exploring Wendy II's sexual awakening from innocence to knowing, where the ostensible 13 year old Wendy is sexually assaulted by Hook, making the entire encounter uncomfortable. This, on top of Wendy II already being somewhat sexually precocious at 13 (as evidenced by her "happy thoughts poem" about being in bed with Peter) makes her entirely unbelievable as an adolescent to begin with. Furthermore, as the boy who never grew up, Louis Partridge's pan is absolutely grown, so instead of the impish Pan, we are left with a bizarrely aware man-child who would be more appropriate to being a College first year student rather than the embodiment of childhood at war with Hooks representation of adulthood.
In the end, this comes off as nothing more than a poor excuse for a vanity project for de Paolis. I can only wonder whether the source material is equally as weak as this film adaptation.
This adaptation of Laurie Fox's novel skips a generation - it is Margaret who is Wendy II's mother rather than Jane (which in the original Barrie timeline makes sense, as Wendy was late Victorian/Edwardian; Jane was during WWII; Margaret would have been c. 1960s-70s; Wendy II: 1980s; and Berry c. 2010s). In Fox's novel, it is Wendy II grandmother Jane that goes missing, thereby bestowing the trauma of an absent mother on Margaret, who then inflicted her own traumas onto Wendy II. The removal of Margaret from de Paolis' adaptation makes the mystery and trauma both more immediate and more rushed in feeling (although this could be the result of a grossly inexperienced writer/director/actor in de Paolis), where Wendy II copes by writing letters to herself as if from her MIA mother as a child, but as an adult has borderline psychotic breaks that seem to come from nowhere.
De Paolis' accented English (presumably from Italian) immediately marks her as the cuckoo in the nest, where the younger iterations of the character have no such indicator. Furthermore, it seems that de Paolis is working from an entirely different set of motives/objectives than the rest of the cast, where adult Wendy experiences some kind of cognitive disorder that also never appears in her younger self or is explained. Furthermore, while a key aspect is the absences of Wendy II's mother Jane, this abandonment seems to impact adult Jane more than her younger self, enough so her own motherhood becomes a significant hurdle.
Iain Glen is sufficiently creepy as Hook; however, de Paolis is rather heavy handed when exploring Wendy II's sexual awakening from innocence to knowing, where the ostensible 13 year old Wendy is sexually assaulted by Hook, making the entire encounter uncomfortable. This, on top of Wendy II already being somewhat sexually precocious at 13 (as evidenced by her "happy thoughts poem" about being in bed with Peter) makes her entirely unbelievable as an adolescent to begin with. Furthermore, as the boy who never grew up, Louis Partridge's pan is absolutely grown, so instead of the impish Pan, we are left with a bizarrely aware man-child who would be more appropriate to being a College first year student rather than the embodiment of childhood at war with Hooks representation of adulthood.
In the end, this comes off as nothing more than a poor excuse for a vanity project for de Paolis. I can only wonder whether the source material is equally as weak as this film adaptation.
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