Film
Hook
- Director
- Steven Spielberg
- Certificate
- U
- Running Time
- 141 mins
There’s more Robert Bly than Captain Bligh in Steven Spielberg’s glutinous 1991 reworking of the venerable J.M. Barrie yarn as a New Age saga of self-discovery and family values. Nippers looking forward to an orgy of swashbuckling, plank-walking and plundering on the high seas may be dismayed by the gaseous menopause swamps in which the adventure so frequently gets bogged down. Spielberg’s Peter Pan (Robin Williams) is a workaholic lawyer who’s conveniently forgotten his childhood adventures and neglects to spend enough ‘Quality Time’ with his squeaky children. When Hook (a splendidly sneery Dustin Hoffman) snatches the squeakies while they’re on holiday in London, Inspector Phil Collins of the Yard is stumped. Diminutive Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts in an outfit skimpy enough to keep the most reluctant paternal viewer entertained) then whisks disbelieving Peter off to Neverland and reunites him with the streetwise, ethnically balanced Lost Boys to do battle with Hook and his evil sidekick Smee (Bob Hoskins).
Spielberg’s $70 million budget is all up there on screen in the form of spectacular sets decorated in a small range of primary colours. It’s certainly not been lavished on the script, which provides more unintentional laughs than is healthy for a production of this magnitude.
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