it's sad to see Peter all grown up and I mean come on, marrying Wendy's GRANDDAUGHTER. And Tinker Bell was awful.
I never saw this as a kid so I have no nostalgia for this. Once they go to Never land I became bored. This is way too long. Robin Williams is alright, this is not his best. I thought Dustin Hoffman's Hook was weird. All the kids were annoying.
One of my favourite movies. I always lean to anything fairytale related, and this retelling of Peter Pan is no different. Robin Williams is AMAZING in his role as an aged Peter Pan and he really does make the film. The rest of the cast are just as incredible though, it really is an all celebrity cast.
As I started watching this film, it was like a song or poetry. It seemed familiar but like I was hearing it for the first time again with fresh ears. Well, it was exactly that as this was the first time I have watched Hook since having it on VCR as a child. It's no wonder the first third of the film is so familiar, I probably lost concentration after halfway through and played with something whilst watching half-heartedly as a child. I did feel myself slipping away during the 2 and a bit hours. Although it drags, there aren't any scenes that I would say were unnecessary so maybe you just need to be in the mood for the whole thing. I particularly enjoyed the message even if it was kind of messily executed in my opinion. That somehow felt rushed i.e. the way Peter realises his happy moment but then forgets everything about his life after Neverland seems jumpy and not seamless. Probably to push the plot for the Tink kiss so in my opinion, a little gimmicky and not completely thought through. I love the kids in this movie - I wish their personalities which I got a glimmer of in the very beginning of the film had shone through rather than it be the Robin Williams' show but then again it is Robin Williams. I wouldn't class this as one of his iconic performances though. Overall, a nostalgic childhood movie of mine that I probably shan't be revisiting for a while until I've forgotten again. Much like Peter himself.
[8.7/10] We live in the age of the late sequel. Any property with the slightest bit of name recognition has to be revivified and dredged back up to please the masses once more. Reboots and remakes are not enough anymore. We want continuations of our childhood heroes and long-loved tales, updated for our modern sensibilities and grow-up attitudes.
The catch is that despite the glut of these projects, few have been especially good at satisfying these needs or justifying the resurrections. Maybe they should look all the way back to the veritable dark ages of 1991, when Steven Spielberg and his team added another act to J.M. Barrie’s famed 1904 play and the slew of adaptations it spawned. Perhaps it’s the distance in time, or performers involved, or just Spielberg at the height of his powers. Whatever the reason, Hook succeeds as an extension of the Barrie original in a way so few latter day updates do.
That comes, in large part, because it has something to say. Peter Pan is famously about not wanting to grow up and the threshold between childhood and adulthood that so many are both so eager and so reluctant to cross. Hook doesn't just rehash that idea with new window-dressing; it turns it on its head.
Spielberg’s take on the Neverland mythos is, like so many family films in the nineties, about a stuffy, business-focused parent learning that their loved ones are more important than their work. But it’s not just about Peter rediscovering his zest for life and the mischievous spark of youth; it’s about him needing to rediscover it because he’s a dad.
More than anything, Hook is about the joys and satisfaction of parenthood, rendered all the more precious and sacred to those parents who were once orphans. While the 1904 original is about children running away from their mother and father to revel in their youth, the 1991 sequel is about a father returning to Neverland letting that same spirit of youth reconnect him to his children.
That tack gives the film ballast, adding an emotional undercurrent to the fantasy land adventure of pirates and lost boys and flying knaves tossing insults and paint bombs at one another. For all its family-friendly adventurism, Hook isn’t afraid to lay into the waterworks, in moments when a crowd full of orphans stands up to honor the woman who loved them, or Peter realizes that his happy thought is becoming a father. This is no mere soulless redo; it’s a movie wrought from the children who grew up loving the story of The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up and looked upon it with different eyes when they were Mr. and Mrs. Darling than when they were Wendy, John, and Michael.
It’s also just damn fun. You can skate by for more than two breezy, colorful hours without ever having to dig deeply into the film’s themes and instead just enjoying the tale of a timid, beamer-driving lawyer remembering that he’s Peter frickin’ Pan. One of the best things about Hook is that it’s accessible at several different levels: as a simple story of good versus evil, as a deeper story of self-discovery and being a good parent, or even as a meditation on orphanhood and mortality. For all that’s going under the hood (or in the ship’s hold, given the circumstances), the movie rarely, if ever, forgets to just be fun as hell.
Much of that comes from the performers. There has never been a better casting choice to play a spirited young boy in a grown man’s body than Robin Williams. He sells the irony of Peter Pan having become a modern day pirate, one scared of heights and flying, worried about every eventuality rather than apt to throw caution for the wind. But he also sells that nebbish’s re-transformation into a flying, fighting, crowing sprite who can lob barbs of the verbal and literal variety like nobody’s business. Hook doesn't work without Williams as its anchor, plying his usual motor-mouthed quips, but also communicating the heart and deeper ideas of the picture, at the same time he’s called upon to play a Neverland neophyte.
But he meets his equal and opposite in Dustin Hoffman’s take on James Hook, Captain. This is Hoffman at his scene-chewing best. He lays into the role with relish, bringing a theatrical bent to the foppish old brute, whose devotion to good or poor form, his desire for vengeance and the catharsis of war with a worthy adversary, and his propagandizing plots makes him a brilliant realization of the classic character.
That’s before you get to Bob Hoskins finding his jittery glory as Smee. And Maggie Smith delivering all the wistful gravitas she is capable of. And Charlie Korsmo displaying a surprisingly layered performance as Peter’s disgruntled son. And all of the whimsical lost boys and rowdy pirates and other supporting characters who wow in parts big and small. Sure, Julia Roberts is off in this despite some big scenes, but the casting directors went all out in this one, populating both Neverland and London with fantastic faces.
The same goes for the production designers. There’s a certain stage-y, unreal quality to Neverland that helps give it the larger than life sense of wonder it needs to carry. The sets are colorful, with several up and down levels and inviting cul de sacs that give it scope and scale despite fairly enclosed environs. So much of the movie depends on Neverland feeling right, and that’s never a problem thanks to the playhouse feel of the Lost Boys’ colony, Captain Hook’s lagoon, and even the storied bedroom that’s the gateway to it all.
Of course, Spielberg’s camera also adds to the spirit of the film. There is, appropriately for a Peter Pan, a great use of shadows, hinting at the differences between who Peter Banning was and who he used to be. In the same vein, Spielberg deploys any number of match cuts, most notably placing Williams in the same fists-on-hips preen to signify connection and return to the youthful posture. And he fills the frame with reflections, whether it’s Hook gazing into his own image, or Jack seeing his face on the clocks he smashes, or Peter finding his old self in the water after a bump on the noggin. The cinematography, iconography, and aesthetic of the film is to die for.
Or to live for. That is, secretly, what Hook centers itself around. At one point in the movie, during a stretch that is, frankly, somewhat overexplain-y, Peter admits that he never wanted to grow up because he never wanted to die. Hook himself seems to have his own sense of fatalism, welcoming death as “the ultimate adventure” and pretending to want it himself only to change the game at the last minute. With that, the movie hints at Neverland as its own sort of living death, a place of stasis where life stagnates. Peter Pan doesn't want that anymore, not because he’s tired of games or adventures or the swashbuckling action that the film does to such thrilling effect. But because he wants to see his children grow up, to grow old and have a full life, as a man, a husband, and a father.
That’s the secret sauce that so many modern updates are missing. Hook does more than just play the old favorites for a new generation. It reflects on them, remixes them, reconsiders them in light of the central themes of the original and how much has changed, in the world and in us, since then. It is a touch treacly and indulgent in places, but like its hero, its heart is in the right place. At a time when so many of our childhood favorites have been brought back to life in one form or another, more works would do well to borrow from this 1991 classic, and know when to hold onto the joys of youth, but also when to grow up.
My first and last watch; which is a great shame because I love Robin Williams.
It doesn't feel like a big screen movie, it feels like a TV broadcast of a stage play.
Dustin Hoffman gives an okay impersonation of the great Peter Cook playing Captain Hook.
Loved this one.
Definitely wasn't expecting prince Zuko in this one.
A classic that isn’t perfect but deserves better reviews. The casting is top notch. The musical score is magical. As are the visuals.
The movie just takes a wrong turn when one of the lost boys are killed by Hook. It takes away some of the magic.
Steven Spielberg’s Hook is a colossal blunder that fails spectacularly. This re-imagining of James Barrie’s classic tale finds Peter Pan all grown-up and returning to Neverland to rescue his children from the clutches of Captain Hook. With an all-star cast that includes Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Bob Hoskins, and Julia Roberts, one would think that the film couldn’t go wrong; but somehow Spielberg found a way. The most atrocious aspect of this re-imagining is the Lost Boys; which are written as bad ‘90s caricatures. Additionally, the special effects and set designs are astoundingly poor (which seems unimaginable for a Spielberg film). John Williams delivers a wonderfully enchanting score, but it can only do so much. Yet, there are a few magical moments, and a charm to some of the characters. While it’s mildly entertaining, Hook is a complete mess that fails to live up to the spirit of Barrie’s classic.
Nothing will ever convince me that this was a bad movie. I know the critics hated it, and I know Spielberg wasn't too keen on it until after Robin's death, but this is the perfect adventure movie to me. Sure, the nostalgia glasses are probably forming that opinion, but to me, there are very few moments in movies that have ever hit as hard as Peter remembering how to fly. "Just hold on to that happy thought, Peter!" right as John Williams' perfect score kicks in as Peter flies through that tree...perfection.
Also, Hoffman absolute hamming it up as Hook is too much fun. Dude was told to be an old-school film villain, and he just ran with it.
So, I found this in my collection and thought I watch it again. I remember I went to the cinema back then.
It's definitely from a different time. There are early stages of CGI but almost everything you see is real. Which works in favor of the movie. The sets are great and almost give this a theatre feeling. And the costumes are great, too. Acting shows highs and lows but Dustin Hoffman is stealing this movie. Well, he's the title character, isn't he ? Williams is OK, I felt he's holding back. Julia Roberts I think was weak.
The story idea is actually pretty interesting and I have to admit I shed a tear or two towards the end. I still can't go above a "7" rating as I think it's way to modern at times. Skateboarding kids and spiked, colored hair just isn't Peter Pan. Plus there is the issue that this is supposed to be a family or kids movie (or not?). Yet, people are getting shot (which is presented as being funny) and killed.
Most of it are pretty much the same issues I remember having back in 1991. It's an OK movie with highs and lows that goes through some length. Definitely worth watching but probably not repeatingly.
Shout by AlexanderZBlockedParent2016-12-22T14:06:29Z
Robin Williams, efficient antidepressant with no side effects.