Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Neverland Blu-ray Movie Review

Everything but the kitchen Tink.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 25, 2012

Syfy evidently can’t be content with revising its own name, one of the most patently silly rebrandings in the history of cable television. For the past several years, Syfy has developed its own niche, revisiting iconic stories of yore and remaking them in its own, supposedly science fiction, image. The fact is, Syfy has veered rather far from “pure” science fiction, branching out into fare as far afield from H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury as reality television competitions (albeit with a quasi-scifi twist, having been built around special effects and makeup artists). Syfy’s collaborations with writer- director Nick Willing and producers Robert Halmi, Sr. and Jr., offer another example of fare that is probably not traditionally science fiction, but which has still found a home on the network and in at least a couple of instances has generated huge viewership. Starting with Tin Man in 2007, Willing took on one of the most beloved tales of all time, L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, and gave it a post-modern twist that reinvented several characters a la the somewhat similar (in concept if not effect) Wicked. Two years later Willing was back with the considerably less successful Alice, a reworking of the iconic works of Lewis Carroll. 2011 saw the debut of Neverland, Willing’s attempt to reimagine Sir James Matthew Barrie’s immortal (pun intended) creation Peter Pan. Of course Peter has been fodder for all sorts of adaptations through the years, and none other than Steven Spielberg attempted his own take on the tale years ago with Hook (ironically, that film’s Smee, Bob Hoskins, recreates his role for this miniseries). And though Hook was a sequel of sorts and Neverland is a prequel of sorts, that doesn't necessarily set it apart from the scads of other Peter Pan adaptations: none other than humorist Dave Barry wrote a series of Peter Pan prequels under the catchall title of Peter and the Starcatchers. (Disney has optioned the series for film, and is reportedly working on at least one 3D animated version.)

Willing seems drawn to source novels or stories that offer a “stranger in a strange land,” strange lands which Willing tends to reinvent as a stray planet or alternate universe. He’s up to his old tricks again in Neverland, though he gets there by a rather circuitous route that sees him drawing on a number of contemporary pop culture references, including films as disparate as the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Avatar, the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes reboots, Oliver Twist, and, just for good measure, a dash of Harry Potter. In this version, Peter (Charlie Rowe) is initially a 1906 London lad who might be thought of as a “modern day” Oliver Twist, part of a roving gang of parentless boys who thieve under the mentorship of their own Fagin, one Jimmy Hook (Rhys Ifans). A brief prologue to the Pan/Hook arc is actually cast several hundred years previously, as a group of pirates, improbably led by a woman named Elizabeth Bonny (Anna Friel) take down a British ship and bring aboard some booty, which includes a weird glowing orb (kind of like a magical snow globe). When Bonny doesn’t like what she sees, she fires a gun at it, at which point a huge explosion of light ensues and the pirate ship and its inhabitants are sucked into some kind of void and disappear from view. Care to guess where they’ve ended up?

Back in London, Jimmy seems to be attempting to reintroduce himself to London high society, a class from which he has evidently fallen from grace. He’s being helped by a shadowy figure who seems to be involved in some sort of occult organization (replete with Holmes-esque secret meetings and cowls). Jimmy doesn’t tell Peter what’s going on, only that they need to rob a nearby antiques store, and it’s there that Jimmy finds (guess what?)—the long lost orb seen in the pirate prologue. Jimmy’s a klutz, though, and drops the globe, which once again emits a massive light and sucks Jimmy and all of the other boys save Peter into its gaping maw. Peter attempts to figure out what’s going on by shadowing Jimmy’s cowled mentor, but ends up figuring out he needs to tap the globe to be sucked into it himself, something he decides will help him ultimately be able to rescue his comrades. And so, finally, more than a half hour into this nearly three hour enterprise, we get all of our major characters in Neverland, which in true Willing fashion is not the fantasy world of childhood, but an actual physical place, a planet that due to a space-time anomaly, is a place where nothing and no one ages.

The rest of Neverland plays out with a variety of interlocking subplots. Jimmy falls for Elizabeth and they both decide they need to get their hands on some magical minerals that allow the fairies like Tinkerbell (voiced by Keira Knightley, herself a woman pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean) to fly. That sets the pirates off to raid the fairy homeland in a more or less direct allusion to the environmentally themed Avatar (and note the similarity of the fairies’ glowing region to a certain holy site in the Cameron film). In the meantime, Peter goes through one tribulation after another, trials that become increasingly interminable as this miniseries wends its way toward its conclusion. He and his “crew” (the other boys) make contact with a tribe of Indians who live in one of Neverland’s regions, and that of course allows Peter to meet Tiger Lily (Q’orianka Kilcher). Peter’s adventures ultimately lead him to figuring out what’s going on with the magical orb and how he might be able to return to London. That brings him into conflict with Jimmy and the pirates by the end of Part 1 of the miniseries, a conflict which ends with Peter being seriously injured. That in turn leads Tinkerbell to aid in healing him, which then leads to Peter being imbued with the magical minerals that allow him to fly (among other “special powers”).

Neverland is certainly head and shoulders above Willing’s Alice, an attempt which completely missed the ebullient spirit of Carroll and instead descended into a weirdly anachronistic Gothic feeling a lot of the time. While this redo of Barrie certainly isn’t the childlike fairy tale the original is, it manages to incorporate enough interesting new material to hold interest, even if there’s way too much plot for the flimsy premise to support. This is a miniseries that has everything but the kitchen sink, and while that keeps things “busy”, it’s not always to the miniseries’ benefit. Neverland probably would have played much better had it simply been a two hour made for television movie. As it stands, it feels awfully padded at times, especially as Peter undergoes one trauma after another, many of which never add anything to the plot or character development.

This is another outing that is full of green screen material, and as such it has the slightly hazy, surreal look of the two other Willing enterprises. That actually works to Neverland’s otherworldly benefit, and a lot of this film manages to evoke both charm and terror, two things that were certainly part and parcel of Barrie’s original conception. The performances are generally adequate, with Ifans doing okay work trying to remake Hook as a brooding, put upon soul with “Method” interior conflicts. Rowe emotes a little too much for his own good in several key sequences, but makes for a winning Peter overall. Kilcher appears to have been dubbed (or at least post-looped), and not very artfully at that, something which detracts and distracts from her appealing presence.

Neverland Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Neverland is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of RHI Entertainment and Vivendi Entertainment with a VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a very nice looking high definition presentation, if one takes into account the glut of green screen footage, which lends large swaths of Neverland a hazy, soft and sort of surreal looking ambience. The CGI textures are often gauzy and while colors are bold, bright and incredibly well saturated, it can't be stated that there's a wealth of fine detail in most of the animation. The live action elements look quite nicely sharp, clear and very well defined, and close-ups reveal a wealth of pleasing fine detail. If you've seen Tin Man or Alice, you know exactly what to expect from this Blu-ray, as Neverland falls into more or less the same category.

Neverland Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Neverland's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio mix is really quite impressive, given the television roots of this outing. Immersion is quite consistent, with some very nice ambient environmental effects nicely dotting the surrounds and achieving an evocative aural sense of what Neverland is like. Several sequences feature some very nice panning effects as, for example, Tinkerbell flits from place to place. The mix is also quite frequently awash in some very impressive and bombastic LFE, with everything from cannon fire to the sonic "boom" when the orb emits its light roaring out of the subwoofer. Fidelity is very strong throughout, with dialogue cleanly and clearly presented. One slight problem, as noted above in the main body of the review, is with Kilcher's dialogue. It sounds like the actress was either dubbed or post-looped, and rather badly at that.

Neverland Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary By Writer-Director Nick Willing. Willing makes for a quite congenial commentator, talking about his methods in adapting and "scifi"-ing the story. He also gets into some of the technical issues in terms of the glut of green screen material here. This commentary is anecdotal at times, but enjoyable.


• The Story Behind the Story: Cast Interviews (HD; 15:35) features segments with Rhys Ifans, Anna Friel, Charlie Rowe and Bob Hoskins. Almost all of these are simple one or two sentence to answers that are presented as textual interstitials.


• Green Screen to Scene (HD; 3:45) focuses on the CGI heavy special effects, and includes segments on The Alchemist's Orb, Discovering Dr. Fludd, Chased by Pirates, and Battle on Bull Island. Green screen filming is shown in a sort of split screen (actually the two screens overlap just slightly) next to finished footage. That said, what is shown on the green screen footage rarely matches exactly what's being shown in the final footage, in terms of angles and shots.


• Journey into Neverland: Art Gallery includes storyboards and production design sketches.


• Neverland: Access All Areas (HD; 22:23) is a nice looking behind the scenes featurette that, judging by the British narrator, probably aired on Sky TV.


• Trailer (1080i; 2:13)

Neverland Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're a fan of Tin Man or Alice, you'll find a lot to like in Neverland. Willing has his formula down pat now, and in some ways, Neverland is the best of the three reworkings Willing and Syfy have presented to an often adoring public. The miniseries still has too many twists and turns for its own good, and it's too long by at least an hour. But the production design is quite good, performances are enjoyable and there are enough new elements introduced here to hold viewer interest, at least most of the time. With great looking visuals and audio and a nice supply of supplementary material, Neverland comes Recommended.