Pan

(PG) ★½

Director: Joe Wright.

Cast: Levi Miller, Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried, Adeel Akhtar.

"I'm not talking to you until you stop dressing up like a vampire."

DOES Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit have a place in the Peter Pan story?

There’s a question you probably never thought you’d read, but it’s being asked thanks to this abysmal prequel to JM Barrie’s beloved children’s story about a boy who never wanted to grow up.

Believe it or not but Kurt Cobain’s abstract anthem of alienation features in this film. So does The Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop. But these songs haven’t just been lobbed on to the soundtrack for a bit of anachronistic fun, they’re sung by the cast as if they were sea shanties.

It’s weird and stops you dead in your tracks as you ask “why?”.

That’s a word that comes up a lot while watching this boring blockbuster, as in “why do the effects look so crappy?” or “why did Hugh Jackman (one of the few redeeming features of this film) and Rooney Mara sign up for this?” or “why don’t they just give Garrett Hedlund the 2015 Razzie Award for worst performance and be done with it?” or “why did they bother to make a Peter Pan origin story if this is the best story they could come up with?”.

The origin story (which apparently has nothing to do with Barrie’s work and is purely the creation of screenwriter Jason Fuchs) has the future Peter Pan (Miller) as an orphan who is whisked away from his London orphanage during the Blitz by a flying pirate ship.

He is then thrown into the servitude of Blackbeard (Jackman), who puts orphans and adult prisoners to work in the mines digging for pixum, which is the street name for a crystalline substance Blackbeard smokes in order to live forever (you might know it as fairy dust).

While in the mines, Peter meets James Hook (Hedlund) and the two escape, with Peter keen to find his mother and perhaps fulfil a prophecy that foretells he is the chosen one.

There is so much wrong with this film. First of all, the whole “prophecy/chosen one” rubbish smacks of laziness on the part of Fuchs. While such a trope can be used well (The Matrix) or subverted nicely (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), nine times out of 10 it's indolent screenwriting (The Phantom Menace). Here it's definitely the latter - a shorthand excuse to make a character do something and fight someone without having to come up with actual character motivations or goals.

Maybe Fuchs’ script has been diluted somewhere along the way – the whole “smoking pixie dust” thing plus a few almost-dark moments makes it plausible there was an edge or depth to this that has been lost. But if that’s not the case, then the blame for this mess surely lays at Fuchs’ feet. Tiger Lily (Mara) and Hook lack anything close to a personality, while the story bumbles from one poorly choreographed and badly animated CG-heavy action sequence to the next (which I guess is partly Wright's fault). The rest of the time, the plot makes no sense.

Hedlund’s performance is dire. He’s trying to channel Indiana Jones or Han Solo but ends up overacting and mugging for the camera like he’s The Cowardly Lion playing a cowboy. Only Jackman, who chews the scenery but at least does so with style, escapes unharmed from this fiasco and despite having one of the worst costumes to end up on the big screen, he’s actually quite watchable.

Maybe this is all being a bit harsh for what is a kids’ movie, but this would have been easier to swallow if it didn’t look so terrible. For a film with a budget of $150 million, this has some of the worst greenscreen effects seen in a long time and has the effect of making Neverland never feel like an actual place inhabited by actual people. Hell, the film can barely make war-time London feel like a real place.

Nothing feels real, none of the characters connect, the performances are bad, the script is worse, and if not for Jackman and a couple of good gags, this would be utterly irredeemable.

As it is, it’s a dud of a film that no one was asking for. Even if you were wondering how Captain Hook and Peter Pan came to blows or if you wanted to see Hook lose his hand, you’ll feel ripped off because those things are not in this movie. Which makes you wonder what the point of this dull off-key exercise was.