★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆





It’s all surface and no substance in this high-flying but heavy-handed prequel to the Peter Pan story, featuring characters ‘introduced by’ J.M. Barrie…no, really, that’s how the original author who created these marvellous stories is referred to in a two second snippet of the closing credits.





Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a young boy – subject of an ancient prophecy – is whisked away to a new world in order to defeat great evil while making his mother Mary (subtle, I know) proud. Peter (newcomer Levi Miller) is snatched from a dingy workhouse (itself snatched from Oliver Twist) by a band of pirates led by the dreaded Blackbeard (a hammy Hugh Jackman) and taken to Neverland. In the depths of Blackbeard’s fairy dust mines, Peter crosses paths with a young James Hook (Garett Hedlund), and the stage is set for all our characters to tread their first steps towards the story we all know and love.



