Director Report Card: Steven Spielberg (1991)

16. Hook

I suppose every film lover of a certain age and demeanor had a Steven Spielberg movie they watched over and over again as a kid. His movies are the kind almost tailor-made to capture the imagination of young movie nerds. I certainly saw “Jaws” as a youth and it probably changed my life but we didn’t own it on VHS when I was a young kid. “Jurassic Park” scared the crap out of me as a little guy, making me unwilling to return to it for many years. While I revisited “E.T.” and the “Indiana Jones” movies plenty, I ultimately can't say that the Spielberg movie young Zack watched the most was one of the “cool” ones. No, my childhood favorite was “Hook.” For reasons I shall attempt to uncover soon enough, I watched this one incessantly as a youngster. Seemingly, the film was a childhood fave of a lot of other people too, leading to a divisive, love-it-or-hate-it reputation. Some consider it one of Spielberg’s worst films, some say it’s one of his best. Let’s see where I lie.

It almost goes without saying that Steven Spielberg had a fascination with Peter Pan from childhood. The clues were all over his early films: The child-like sense of wonder he held onto well into adulthood, the reoccurring imagery of flying. You see shadows of Captain Hook's pirate ship in “Jaws” and of the Lost Boys in “E.T.” Inevitably, Spielberg would begin to develop a new film based on “Peter Pan” in the early eighties. At one point, it was rumored to be a musical produced by Disney and starring Michael Jackson. Pre-production had begun in 1985 when the birth of Spielberg's son led to him abruptly leaving the project. (This is the same reason he dropped out of the similarly themed “Big.”) Development continued for a few years, with Nick Castle in the director's chair, before Spielberg returned. “Hook,” as the film was now entitled, ended up being Steve’s Peter Pan movie after all.  

Peter Banning is a successful corporate lawyer so devoted to his job that he frequently neglects his two children, eleven-year-old Jack and seven-year-old Maggie. The family travels to England to spend the Christmas holiday with Wendy, the woman who fostered the orphan Peter and his wife's grandmother. Granny Wendy was supposedly the inspiration for the fictional Wendy in J.M. Barrie's “Peter Pan.” While Peter, his wife, and Wendy are at a celebratory dinner, Jack and Maggie are abducted from their bedrooms. None other than Captain Hook claims responsibility. Soon, Tinkerbell appears to drag Peter – actually a middle-age Peter Pan, who forgot all his magical adventures after falling in love with Wendy's granddaughter – back to Neverland. Now, the Lost Boys have three days to get Peter back into flying, crowing, pirate-fighting shape if he hopes to rescue his children from Hook.

The narrative hook, as it were, of “Hook” is painfully ironic: What if Peter Pan, famously the boy who could never grow up... Grew up? The script takes this perhaps obvious idea to its most extreme conclusion. Peter Pan doesn't just grow up to be a normal adult. He's an aggressively boring adult. He's obsessed with his tedious job. He practices grabbing his cell phone around his co-workers like he's a western gunslinger, showing the inflated sense of importance he gives to his profession. He's a “pirate” of Wall Street, a parallel the film points out at least twice. He screams at his kids, fights with his wife, is preoccupied with appearances and rules, and drinks too much. He's even afraid of heights, to take the inversion of the Peter Pan tradition as far as it can. Asking the question of what happens when Peter Pan grows up is as valid a concept as any, I suppose. “Hook” twisting this premise into “What if Peter Pan grew up to be an asshole?” is disappointing though.

That's far from the only way “Hook's” set-up is needlessly heavy-handed. The decade of my youth was awash with mediocre family movies about workaholic dads missing out on their kids' lives. Through some wacky or magical circumstances, they come to appreciate and prioritize their off-spring again. I can only speculate why “parenthood redemption comedies” were so prevalent at the time. It probably has something to do with baby boomer writers grappling with their emotionally distant fathers and a backlash to the materialism of the eighties. Whatever the cause, “Hook” might be the prototypical parenthood redemption comedy. Peter misses his son's ballgame, the most obvious narrative cliché of an absentee dad. He sends an underling with a camcorder in his place, symbolizing how he prioritizes fancy new technology over actually being present in his boy's life. He yammers away on his cellphone, then visual shorthand for someone bringing the office home with them. Mostly, he bickers non-stop with his son, the two not seeming to like or respect each other very much. The story bends entirely around Peter Pan regaining his youthful powers and abilities in service of becoming a better father. Peter's narrative arc is not so much about defeating Captain Hook as it is about proving to his son that he's worthy to be his dad.

Of course, themes of absentee fathers and broken homes run rampant through Spielberg's entire filmography. These ideas are, in a roundabout way, even baked into the Peter Pan story. It's stage tradition that Captain Hook and Wendy's father be played by the same actor, seemingly symbolizing the fear of mature authority figures children can have. (Up to and including their own fathers, everyone's ultimate male authority figure.) Part of Captain Hook's villainous plot involves turning Peter's son against him. He does this over the course of two scenes, one in which he viciously tears down the idea that parents actually care about their children. What makes this idea appealing to lonely, hurt Jack is that it's not entirely a bad guy's lie. Being a parent is hard. Having kids does take over your life. Sacrifice and compromises are necessary. Parents do resent their kids sometimes, much the same way kids resent their parents sometimes. Ultimately, like so much media made by the boomers, “Hook” rhapsodizes in a pure, nostalgic, impossible love between parent and child. Yet the film works best when acknowledging, even if from a sideway glance, the messier realities of having a kid and being someone's child.

A big reason why the “Peter Pan” story resonates – to the point that movie studios are still obsessed with retelling it – is because it's full of deeper, melancholy symbolic touches like that. Look at Tinkerbell's unrequited love for Peter. She pines for a forever-boy who will never notice her romantically, because she's literally not the right size for him. In Barrie's own sequel, Tinkerbell dies after Peter leaves with Wendy. Because fairies only live as long as people believe in them. That's a deep, sad concept full of layers that touches on universal themes. As is the idea of a boy who never grows up, who is so full of boundless youthful energy that he can actually fly and whose days of childish fun stretch on forever. Yet he is irresistibly drawn to the open window of a beautiful girl. Peter can only fulfil the carnal, romantic desires Wendy makes him feel if he leaves Neverland behind forever, a not-too-subtle metaphor for childhood ending once puberty begins. Pixie dust, a shadow untethered from his host and acting on subconscious needs, Peter's androgynous and elfin appearance: All of these are powerful symbols resonating with the mythological, Freudian meaning that floated under the tail-end of the Victorian era. 

"Hook" never touches on many of these ideas in any meaningful way. It squeezes all the darkness and weirdness of "Peter Pan" into the Amblin blockbuster mold. Yet hints remain. Peter and Tinkerbell's unrequited relationship is a subplot that never quite pays off. However, it concludes in a beautiful moment where Tink promises Peter she'll always be waiting for him in the twilight space between wakefulness and dreams. Hook, befitting his status as title character, gets maybe the most interesting reading. Captain Hook is an old man in a world of children. He’s always outrunning a crocodile who ticks like a clock, symbolic of outrunning time ticking away until the day you die. In “Hook,” the pirate has killed the crocodile and stuffed him, seemingly escaping death. Yet he remains obsessed with the idea, smashing every clock he sees and threatening suicide at least once. In the final fight, Peter stripes away Hook’s wig, revealing him further as an old man desperate to hold onto youth. And he meets his end inside the crocodile’s jaws anyway, vanishing into thin air as the unavoidable spectre of death finally catches up with him. 

Spielberg’s film is, perhaps, at its best when embracing these melancholy ideas of youth and death. There’s a montage in the last third of “Hook” that is so good that it stands apart from the rest of the movie. Deep in the Lost Boys’ secret hideaway, Peter finally recalls his origins. He remembers being a baby, gracefully rolling away from his mother as she talks about her deeply pedestrian plans for his future. Tinkerbell carries the crying infant away from the world of responsibilities to the care-free Neverland. We see, in a series of quick cuts, Peter returning to Wendy’s window and her growing older every time. Until, finally, she’s an old woman and Peter is tempted away from Neverland by her youthful granddaughter. By the time he’s holding his own son, he’s forgotten his days in Neverland. Yet the joys of being a parent, a chance to revisit childhood, provides him with the “happy thought” he needs to fly again. This spectacular series of images is when “Hook” best balances the sentimental and sad sides of Spielberg’s style, saying so much in a short span of time. It’s a sequence full of longing, wonder, and resolution. 

Most of “Hook” is not that good. In its worst moments, the film recalls the manic excess of “1941.” For the final raid on Hook’s ship, the Lost Boys outfit themselves with home-made armor and weapons. They defeat the pirates, who have swords and flintlocks, with cannons that fire chicken eggs and marbles. The film takes a little too much cartoonish glee in these scenes of kids humiliating adults, that recall the kind of family comedies you'd think Spielberg would be above. A lot of the scenes with the Lost Boys has that same overbearing energy. One of the kids is a heavy-set young man named “Thud Butt” who curls himself up in a ball and rolls at opponents like the boulder in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” a gag the movie likes so much it does it twice. Scenes of the boys playing basketball, skateboarding, or wind-surfing are the opposite of the timelessness of Berry's Neverland. Instead, such accessories seemed locked in 1991's idea of kid-friendly radness. Yet, as chaotic as the boys are, they are still adorable kids defined by goofy gimmicks most of the time, the film trying to have its conception of childhood both ways. Are these lawless boys out to raise Hell or adorable moppets who all miss their moms?

Criticizing “Hook” for being self-indulgent definitely seems fair. The film includes cameos from a cross-dressing Glenn Close and David Crosby, getting his balls smashed, for seemingly no reason other than it assumed Spielberg and his team. There are quasi-comedic digressions, in moments where Banning is rescued by ethereal mermaids or sniffed at by living flowers. Or a short gag devoted to baseball playing pirates. Through its various moods, the main thing holding “Hook” together is its production design, which is definitely excessive. The Lost Boys have a pool full of paint, creating a map of Neverland. Peter is flung into it from a massive slingshot. Every corner of their forest hideaway is crammed full of color and distraction, to the point where it gets eye-searing at time. Following this trend, the costumes are frequently over-the-top too. Rufio, the leader of the Lost Boys in Peter's absence, wears an outfit that seems positioned between eighties New Romantic fashion and Native American wardress. While others wear baggy pajamas or a forties street urchin get-up. 

As unrestrained as “Hook” can be at times, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't memorable. The exact same qualities that can be criticized can also be commended. The pirate's town is equally as overdone as the Lost Boys' village and it looks fucking cool. Hook's intricately decorated quarters are inside an enormous skull. The clock tower made from the crocodile's corpse is another eye-catching visual. “Hook” is packed full of touches like that. The abduction of the children are where cinematographer Dean Cundey's history in horror shows. The camera follows the claw marks up the hallway, to a window thrown open and casting purple lighting into the room. A similar effect is used when the titular hook is sharpened against a spinning stone and attached to his hand, while prismatic sparks fly. Smaller moments have been burned into my memory as well. Such as a shot from inside a megaphone of Smee speaking, his mouth in the center of the frame. Or the use of slow-motion when Peter slices a coconut, showing the swashbuckling Pan is still inside him. I guess it should be no surprise that even mid-tier Spielberg is phenomenally shot.

Robin Williams as Peter Pan, considering the unending anarchic energy the performer was capable of, seemed like ideal casting. Unfortunately, the script forces Williams to play the straight man for most of the film. The early scenes, of Peter Banning being a dick, or the moments devoted to him having heart-to-hearts with Tink or the Lost Boys do not play to Williams' strengths. It's not until a profane trade of insults with Rufio that the star starts to come to life. Even after that, “Hook” pulls Williams between the extremes of his sensibilities as an actor. At one point, he's chirping like a chicken, drooling like a pirate, or gurgling bubbles. A few minutes later he's tearfully bidding a friend good-bye. It doesn't help that the star transforming into Peter Pan again mostly happens off-screen, in-between scenes. (Or that Williams was obliviously not an action star, most of the sword fights also happening off-screen.) When tossed between sappy, manic, and stuck-up, it's amazing that Williams manages to still create a mostly compelling and likable protagonist. 

On paper, Dustin Hoffman probably seems like a weird choice to play Captain Hook. The short, soft-spoken actor isn't immediately what comes to mind when you think of a legendary pirate captain. Rumored other choices like David Bowie or Donald Sutherland probably make more sense. And yet Hoffman gives an inspired performance as Hook. Unrecognizable under heavy make-up, he vamps fantastically, clearly having the time of his life hamming it up as such a theatrical villain. Hoffman has wonderful chemistry with a joyfully silly Bob Hoskin as Smee, who nearly matches Williams in terms of wild, comedic energy. That the actors played the duo as a dysfunctional gay couple makes their interactions even funnier, vitalizing quite a few scenes in the film's middle section. 

Julia Roberts was supposedly miserable while making the movie but it's never apparent on-screen. She's far more charming as Tinkerbell than in most of her lead roles, imbuing the pixie with a charmingly spunky but still feminine vulnerability. Her romantic scenes with Williams are quiet and sweet, in a way most of the movie isn't. Maggie Smith, also under a lot of old age make-up, plays the elderly Wendy with the grace and poise we expect of the veteran performer. Dante Basco would make Rufio an icon to millennial movie nerds, somehow coming as capably tough despite his ridiculous wardrobe and having some of the script's worst dialogue. I also like Arthur Malet as Tootles, who rides just the right line between genuinely crazy and a cuter, movie version of senility. 

“Hook's” origins as a musical are still present in the final film. Several songs are present in the film. Williams simplifies some of the score's melodies for a kiddie theater song-and-dance in an early scene. The Lost Boys chant a military-like march while training Peter and Maggie singing a mournful, if hopeful, lullaby to herself in another scene. In general, Williams' score is one of his most underrated. The music, both sweeping with airy strings and deep with bold brass, bring seafaring adventure, flight, and child-like wonder to mind. Rumbling bombast perfectly suits the mayhem of the Lost Boys scenes. Hook gets a powerful theme that also implies the storming seas, with some more eccentric elements introduced later on. The only element of the score that doesn't work for me are the piano-and-bass driven theme Williams cooks up for Peter Banning's day job, which just reminds me too much of the soft jazz endemic of the early nineties. 

“Hook” was a blockbuster in 1991, grossing over three hundred million dollars at the box office. (Which could only be considered disappointing when compared to Spielberg's previous record-breakers.) There was all the expected tie-ins, like action figures, Happy Meal toys, video games, and other pop culture debris. While largely dismissed by critics at the time, the film's art direction, costumes, visual effects, make-up, and one of Williams' songs were nominated for Oscars. In time, those kids who grew up watching it would turn the movie into an unlikely cult classic. Shout “RU-FI-O” or “Bangarang!” around the right people and you'll get shouts of recognition. Spielberg himself would eventually express dismay with the film, saying he didn't have confidence in the script and tried to compensate with production values. In my eyes, “Hook's” fans and critics are both right and wrong. It's parts are greater than its whole, certain elements and scenes remaining charming even if the overall film is an undeniable mess. [Grade: B-]