PAN

"Welcome...to Neverland!!"



          This film is fun! Yes, its very cheesy and a bit too fantastical, but its a lot of fun and very light-hearted, and surprisingly comes with a heartful plot. Some of the characters are particularly interesting, despite being over the top. Visually, it's a treat, and the action is accompanied by a great high-energy music.

          Let's get the mud out of the way first. It is a bit...no, actually, its very cheesy. A lot of the dialogues, as well as the characters themselves, in fact, are very cheesy and over the top. But the actors themselves did a great job. Only Hugh Jackman could make an over the top Blackbeard very cool & charismatic as he is in the film. And then, even some the action sequences and the effects are very cheesy & fantastical, you'd be laughing out of the silliness at one point.

          But, if you can bear the silliness of this film (like I did), you'll find that there's gold beneath the mud. Its seriously fun if you can ignore the occasional silliness. Blackbeard is the standout character for me. He's so charismatic! And cool and a little bit badass, too. Just from the way he looks, he'd be laughable if it wasn't Hugh Jackman behind the beard. And he's funny at times, too. A wonderful character. And Garrett Hedlund also makes James Hook very likeable, you'd want to root for him. And main characters Peter Pan and Tiger Lily weren't half bad, either. A great array of characters and cast, for the most part.

          And then there's the plot, which is surprisingly very heartful and easy to follow. There isn't a lot of surprises or twists, but the characters themselves have their own motivations, and the intertwining of these makes for very nice subplots. Meanwhile, the main plot regarding Peter himself is very touching and heartful. And if there's one thing that this film did right (which I find recent films don't), is the pacing. I felt it was paced perfectly -nothing was too fast or too dragged on.

          And yes, there's quite a lot of humour. But I bet you wouldn't suspect that a lot of them came from Hugh Jackman's Blackbeard. And then the action sequences are good enough...not great, but they're accompanied by a brilliant high-energy soundtrack/score by John Powell. There isn't a truly quality aspect of this film that makes it special, in fact it is quite a light & straightforward film. But if you can bear/ignore the cheesiness, it is really fun with lots of humour with an awesome villain and a heartful plot. A good film that's worth both the time and the price of admission.

VERDICT: 8.0