Review of Peter and Wendy

I have been a fan of nearly everything to do with Peter Pan ever since I was lucky enough to see it on the London stage back in the 60s. My best friends parents took him and I to see it as his 10th birthday treat. It was magical and the wonderful Wendy Craig was playing Peter .The only production of Peter Pan I find disappointing is the Disney version as its too sugary. Peter Pan is in many ways a dark tale and this version has its sorrows but also its joys.In this version Lucy ,a teenage girl,comes to Great Ormond Street for a serious heart operation.She finds herself reading Peter Pan to some younger patients.,First in dreams and then under anaesthetic and at times in the real world she finds herself as Wendy and characters from her world are now in the tale. The other patients have become the lost boys and her surgeon,Mr Wylie, is Captain Hook. The highlight for me was the mixing of Neverland with the hospital itself. The basement exercise pool doubled as the Lagoon and Marooners Rock was a stack of hospital beds and equipment. The final fight scenes were one minute on The Jolly Roger and next on the Hospital ward and then back again. Hazel Doupe is great as Lucy/Wendy, playing it grown up one minute and a lost little girl the next. Stanley Tucci plays Hook with real gusto, him and the other pirates really ham it up without becoming ridiculous . The Wendy/Peter/Tiger Lily love triangle (love rectangle if you include Tinkerbell) is also subtly explored as Peter Pan is characterised from Lucy's world by a boy she has a crush on(blink and you miss the clue). So why only 9 stars.Well its the "I Believe in Faries " bit, Movies and TV have never satisfactorily got it right. On stage Peter breaks 'the fourth wall' and that is almost impossible to duplicate and in this film it happens for no reason.