Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.


While there were a couple of “Robin Williams’ moments,” plugging the wonderfully funny movie Good Morning Vietnam (Pirate Smee bellows “Good morning, Neverland!) and the last line of Hook was “Seize the day!” by an old geezer finding his lost youth, which recalls his excellent movie, Dead Poets’ Society, and there was some questionable plot structure, on the whole this Steven Spielberg movie starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts and Bob Hoskins was a lot of fun if you disregard one death and the other implied. Truly, it's an adventure boys and boyish men will probably enjoy it most.

It begins in reality as Peter Panning, played by Williams, is attending a Peter Pan play with his young daughter playing Wendy. In case anyone has forgotten that Peter Pan was the boy who didn’t know what a kiss was and never wanted to grow up, the play reminds us charmingly. Peter is there with his wife and young son, but he gets a call from work and despite his promise to his son, he doesn’t make it to his son’s big baseball game the next morning.

Finally they are all together again on a trip to Peter’s grandmother Wendy’s house in London where a shaggy dog named Nana and one of the Lost Boys, now an old man who keeps looking for his marbles or happy thoughts, live with Wendy. Wendy is being honored that night for her life’s work of finding orphans homes, Peter, being one, emcees the black tie-event. Suddenly things become weird. This is not his dream yet, but it must be Wendy who imagines the strange breeze that blows open the window behind her as it seems to also in the childrens’ room.

When they come back to the house, it is broken into and they discover the children missing with a golden sword stabbing a sheet of paper to the wall. It is from Captain JAS Hook who has kidnapped Peter’s children. Now, is this where Peter’s dream begins? Have the children really been kidnapped? We see the police come and remark that it may be a prank “because of their literary history.” When they leave and Peter is reminded by Wendy that he is Peter Pan and the only one who can save his kids by going back to Neverland, he laughs at her and goes upstairs to the childrens’ room.

While closing the window, Tinkerbelle flits in and has to knock him out to carry him in a trail of pixie dust off to a small, New Zealand-type island with waterfalls that is the “first star on the right and straight on to morning.” The dream continues as he wakes up to a bustling village with pirates all around. He believes he is dreaming at first, but Tinkerbelle fights off the bad guys for him and eventually gets him to where the Lost Boys live among the trees. Julia Roberts endearingly plays the fairy who loves him and brings the memory of his childhood back to him again.

So once Peter learns to crow like a rooster, sword fight and fly again, Tinkerbelle makes herself human-size with the wish to kiss Peter and keep him to herself in Neverland. Even though she brings him back to fight Captain Hook for his kids, now she doesn’t want him to do that because he’ll leave then. In the end, though, when he is back in London, she tells him she’ll always be waiting for him in his dreams, loving him. Obviously, as this is Peter’s dream and it is a theme repeated, Peter is tempted to stay a little boy having fun, but he wants to be a good father and husband to his wife more. He fights Captain Hook, played with gusto and wit by Dustin Hoffman, and his children recognize him finally. They want to go home with him.

Is this like Wizard of Oz, though? Perhaps in sentiment, for Peter always had the ability to go home, but he had to learn that he wanted to be there for his kids and be the father they deserved. It wasn’t like Wizard of Oz, though, in symbolism. While Dorothy dreamed of real people acting out her dream, Peter did not. His dream was based on characters from a book his grandmother read to him as a child and his fear of being a pirate in the eyes of his kids (he's a corporate pirate at work).

In the end after Captain Hook is fed to a wooden structure that becomes a wooden, hungry crocodile (another amazing special effect), the children fly back upon thinking happy thoughts of their “Mommy” and “Dad” with Tink leading them. They sneak back into bed and their mother wakes up, but dreams she sees them. When they surprise her, she almost faints. Had it been a dream then, after all? If Captain Hook didn’t really kidnap them, who did? The crazy old man? Or were they ever kidnapped?

I guess it doesn’t matter. The only thing that really matters, it would seem, is that Peter comes back to the window, after climbing the drainpipe, and he’s a new man. He laughs, hugs his kids, kisses his wife and throws his cellphone out the window. He no longer wants to be a corporate pirate. He’s learned his lesson.

Like Peter I have started to look at where my priorities lay. How do I appear to my loved ones? I'm thankful that Hook was a fun, colorful adventure in Peter's mind that reminds us to love our family and to live life as a big adventure to be enjoyed with them. It was a spectacle of movie magic in Spielberg style with family feel-good sentiment that really came alive for me, although Hook does kill one of the Lost Boys, their leader after Peter left, and a pirate who doubted him. This didn’t seem necessary to me at all, especially in a fantasy movie that kids will be watching. Fortunately it was called Hook for more than the evil pirate with a hook for a hand. It's greatest purpose was to unhook our windows to let in childhood dreams so they can help us be who we have forgotten we are.

The ending was cute, a tribute to old people who refuse to become old. "Seize the day!" as he cried and let time stop ticking for just a little while, for the growth of a dream. Fly over to Neverland with him no matter your age...if you dare. It’s the first star on the right and straight on to morning!


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12