Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wendy’ on HBO, Again With the ‘Peter Pan’ Adaptations, This Time in Magical-Realism Style

Now on HBO, Wendy is yet another another Peter Pan adaptation, perhaps original in its Wendy-centric narrative, and not quite original in its magical realism, because Come Away just recently did that, too. Wendy is director Benh Zeitlin’s follow-up to 2012’s ambitious, uneven and Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild, and both films share the style of their creator, for better or worse. With David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) helming the Official Disney Rehash of Peter Pan — Peter Pan and Wendy, due in a year or two, and yes, I hear your sighs — it may inspire a mini-competition of sorts: Who will make the more effective version of Terrence Malick’s Peter Pan?

WENDY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Plates and glasses rattle and clatter as the train passes by. The diner is situated about a quarter-inch from the tracks. Wendy Darling (Devin France) grew up in that diner. Her mother, Angela (Shay Walker), cooked as she toddled about, handing saltshakers and napkins to patrons, and one day, she watched silently as young Thomas (Krzysztof Meyn), her neighbor, hopped the train and never came back. This is a difficult existence, rural and economically challenged, and Thomas was inspired to get out by one of his elders’ insistence that he’d likely grow up to be a “mop and broom man.”

Years later, Wendy is nine, still living in the apartment above the diner, with her twin brothers Douglas (Gage Naquin) and James (Gavin Naquin). She’s come to the conclusion that growing up is horrible. Her mother talks about how she gave up her dreams, because that’s just what adults have to do. “Your life will go by, and nothing will ever happen,” Wendy says in her omnipresent lofty-whispery voiceover narration, then hops the train. Her brothers follow. On board, they meet Peter (Yashua Mack), a boy full of smiles and optimism and wisdom. As the train passes over the water, Peter suddenly shoves the Darling children into the drink. They get in a boat and paddle to a fantastical volcanic island, where Peter promises they’ll never grow old.

Other children are here, including Thomas, who hasn’t aged a day. They live like damn hell ass kings, enacting a genial version of Lord of the Flies. They gambol and cavort, canter and scamper, through jungles and across beaches. They are free of all cares and burdens. Do they ever eat or excrete? Not important! Those details are too boring for a movie, and besides, does time ever pass here? Peter can wave his arms and inspire the ground to burst with mighty mist and steam, or elicit a volcanic eruption. Into the water they dive and swim, finding a submerged cave. Beneath the waves lives the Mother, a great and mighty and creepy and beautiful and protective fish with a glowing-ember E.T. heart. But soon Wendy learns that adults are here too, on ashy barren plains, living but not really alive, and that truth sours their voluptuary existence.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: For me, Wendy serves as a reminder that The Tree of Life cemented Malick as the true master of the untethered gambol-cavort/canter-scamper of youth.

Performance Worth Watching: Devin France has much of the elusive “it” that could make her an extraordinary actress in the future, a la Florence Pugh or Elle Fanning.

Memorable Dialogue: Wendy’s eyerolly voiceover: “Beware, children. You can leave yourself behind. You won’t even know when it happened.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I was at times frustrated, troubled, and taken by Wendy. The cinematography, via Sturla Brandth Grovlen’s intuitive handheld camera, is stunning. The film is a visual marvel, never more so than when the children swim beneath the murk and find the Mother in all her furfuraceous glory, her great, kind eye and wide, uneasy smile all but hidden by lumps and scales and wispy tendrils. She lurches from the camouflaged depths and inspires wonder. The island is a place of wild imagination and atmosphere, a golden-hued contrast to the Darlings’ hardscrabble life in whatever depressed patch of America they live. And Zeitland’s casting is impeccable, his young actors delivering intensely sincere performances.

I liked the way the filmmaker cleverly introduces the Captain Hook character to the story, facilitates the children “flying” underwater instead of through the air and contrasts Angela’s diner as a happy hub of her community with the diner in the adult wasteland, where no food or drink is served, and its patrons sit quietly in their own bubbles of isolation. These are fleeting instances when Wendy satisfactorily coheres. Without its treats for the eye, the film’s meandering pace would be a greater test of our patience. Same goes for Zeitlin’s insistent, quasi-poetic voiceover narration, which is of the inspirational-plaque variety, bon mots crafted to float like whimsical ragweed blown into the wind, but instead they plunk to the ground like old chestnuts.

More troublesome is the racial dynamic the filmmaker presents — the Black children speak with heavily accented affectations and have names like Cudjoe Head and Sweet Heavy, and Peter himself is very much a character of the Spike Lee-coined “Magical Negro” type, imparting his neverland wisdom about the pricelessness of youth on the Caucasian imports. I suspect Zeitlin is earnest but unwitting. The film is very much of a kind with Beasts of the Southern Wild, an inspired but hazy mess of symbolism and lyricism with impressionistic intent. Credit Zeitlin for his stabs at originality, but his work so far strikes me as misguided, tryhard bullshit.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Wendy has its charms, and they’re not insignificant, but it’s ultimately more dud than deed. We didn’t really need yet another another another Peter Pan derivation anyway.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Wendy