After helming A-grade period pieces Pride &Prejudice and
Atonement, director Joe Wright fell into a slump of back to back duds with The
Soloist, Hanna, and Anna Karenina. It appears that same trend continues with
Warner Bros. misfire Pan, an origin story to the character Peter Pan created by
J.M. Barrie.
It’s frustrating to see a once promising director throw his
potential away on such mediocre fare, but at the very least, all of them have
shown inventiveness and gorgeous attention to detail despite their failings,
and the same is true with Pan. Despite being an objectively bad and nonsensical
movie, it’s still such an entertaining mess to behold.
Joe Wright’s main influence when making this film was the
memory of a puppetry theater that his parents once owned and operated, with
this film set to be his gateway to relive those childhood memories. That being
the case, I would be fascinated to see what kind of trippy puppet shows they
put on with how wild this film is. The screenplay by Jason Fuchs is some
near-incomprehensible nonsense, with the first fifteen minutes emulating Oliver
Twist, with Peter residing in what must be the orphanage run by the corrupt
nuns from Philomena, who for reasons not given explanation offer children to
Neverland pirates in exchange for payment. That’s the first twenty minutes of
the film, and it only gets weirder from there, essentially becoming Treasure-Island-meets-Moulin-Rouge.
As events continually build up in their over the top nature,
with miner children and pirates singing chain gang covers of “Smells Like Teen
Spirit” and “Blitzkrieg Bop”, giant birds with cartoonish giant eyes and
skeleton cage bodies, guns that transform their victims into fluorescent colored
powders, right down to CG-Cara Delevingne mermaids, the film quickly becomes a
trippy and out of control cluster of randomness.
Such things don’t work in any objective fashion, but as a so
ridiculous its fun piece of entertainment, it’s wonderful. At the very least,
no one can accuse Joe Wright of never committing to his vision with full
investment. Even though it was destined to fail one way or another, it’s
admirable to see a director know what kind of film he wants to make, and
tackles it all with such infectious enthusiasm. It may not make much sense in
any practical way, but it does make for a richly entertaining misfire.
This carries over into the performances especially. As
Garret Hedlund mugs and mumbles like a Jack Nicholson character and Rooney Mara
plays the wise-beyond-her-years warrior princess, they’re both eclipsed by a
majestically hammy and scenery devouring Hugh Jackman. Essentially playing what
Eddie Redmayne’s Jupiter Ascending character should have been, the role sees
Jackman instantaneously jump from quiet and sinister to loud and ballistic at
the blink of an eye, with said sudden shifts often eliciting snickers with
their erratic changes, and yet Jackman just makes the character too much fun to
resist.
Pan is also a gorgeously designed movie at that, and while
its photography is sometimes muddy and unpolished, and much of the CGI looking
straight out of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the practicality of all
other technical merits are undeniably lush, from Jacqueline Durran’s colorful
costumes to John Powell’s thrilling swashbuckling compositions. So, while Pan
is a C- misfire in many areas, there’s still plenty of fun – both ironic and
sincere – to be had from its A-grade insanity. “Here we are now! Entertain us”,
indeed.
** / *****
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