Sundays with Spielberg: Hook (1991)
There was a brief period in my life when I counted Hook as my favorite movie. It was a period lasting roughly two years, from the film’s 1991 debut to the 1993 release of Steven Spielberg’s next film, Jurassic Park.
I was 12, and I can vividly remember going to see Hook with my parents in the weeks preceding Christmas. Not only can I recall what theater we saw it at (the Star John R in Madison Heights, Michigan), I remember where I sat, halfway back and in a section on the far right. I can still smell the popcorn. For the first time, a movie so wrapped me up in its world that I felt a distinct sadness when the credits rolled and the lights came up, telling me it was time to jump back into reality.
I’m not surprised that Hook captured me so completely; it is a movie made for 12-year-olds, reintroducing us to a story that holds so much appeal in that tenuous time between childhood and adolescence. It’s a movie that argues adults should act more like children, and it’s so dependent on big emotional hooks (no pun intended) that I understand why so many people were swept away by it when they saw it in their youth.
But how does Hook work for adults, the people Spielberg is apparently saving the lessons for?
Before today, I didn’t know. I hadn’t seen Hook since the mid to late ‘90s. By that point, I didn’t want the Spielberg of whimsy; I wanted the Spielberg who gave me dinosaurs. As I grew older and Spielberg ascended from wunderkind to one of our great cinematic institutions, I was less interested in his take on Peter Pan and more his approaches to the war, science fiction and historical genres. I accepted the general belief that Hook was an overstuffed, obnoxious failure, part of a period when he was still figuring stuff out, and best left in my childhood.
Watching it again, there is some validity to the general critical consensus. Hook is a mess, and a movie that plays into many of Spielberg’s worst tendencies. But it’s not a complete debacle, and a clear step up from the banality of Always. As imperfect as it is, there are still moments when the pixie dust kicks in, the happy thoughts return and the movie takes flight. But still a lot of it belongs in the Boo Box.
Peter Pan grows up
In the late-80s, I imagine that giving Steven Spielberg the go-ahead to make a Peter Pan movie made all the sense in the world. He was, after all, Hollywood’s boy who didn’t grow up, delivering spectacles that thrummed with childlike wonder. It’s not just E.T. and its spot-on depiction of suburban youth; watch Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and you can see how capably Spielberg transports adults back to a place of youthful awe (that film could, of course, serve as its own Peter Pan origin story, culminating with its hero throwing off the shackles of adult responsibility and leaving grown-up life behind). Getting Robin Williams, who vibrated with an almost toddler-like energy, to play Peter Pan also seemed to make sense.
And in Hook’s first 40 minutes, I began to feel my adult cynicism shifting. Hook starts extremely strong, elevating a typical family movie with Spielberg’s liberal doses of whimsy. Williams dials back his usual livewire energy and is convincing as a prototypical yuppie father so consumed by his career that he pushes his kids to the side. It’s not that his Peter Banning is a jerk; he’s just a man driven by fear, so concerned his career will capsize that he clings to it at the expense of everything else. There’s a moment early on where he “duels” with a co-worker with their (giant) cellphones, proving that there’s still a childlike enthusiasm to Peter; it’s just misdirected.
It’s here that I should confess that Spielberg can skillfully manipulate and guilt-trip me, even at 43. Like Williams’ Peter, I have two young kids, probably about the same age as the children in the film. And, like many parents, I struggle with how much attention to give my work and how much to lavish on my children. I like my quiet, and my patience isn’t always the greatest. I felt a twinge of guilt when I heard Peter tell his son Jack (Charlie Korsmo) to grow up or shush away Maggie (Amber Scott). I’ve too often seen the disappointed look in my kids’ eyes when they want to play and I feel I need to focus on work (or newsletters or podcast). And I’ll confess that I felt a sting of pain and the tears welled when Moira told Peter:
“We have a few special years with our children, when they're the ones that want us around. After that you're going to be running after them for a bit of attention. It's so fast Peter. It's a few years, and it's over. And you are not being careful. And you are missing it.”
At that point, I was all in. It helps that Spielberg so deftly weaves in the magic in the early sequences in London. I love the snowy streetscapes, and the way that Grandma Wendy’s (Maggie Smith) Victorian home looks like someone pulled the nursery right out of Barrie’s novel. There’s a clever conceit that Peter was an orphan discovered by Wendy, who’s now old, and that the stories she and her siblings told as children were collected into the stories we know now of Peter Pan and Neverland. There’s a sense of mystery, whimsy and romanticism that shimmers throughout the film’s first act, bolstered by Smith’s charisma and a sparkle that suggests that, perhaps, there’s something true to stories of fairy dust and pixies. I was ready for Peter to fly again; hell, I was ready to fly again.
And then the film had to ruin it by going to Neverland.
Second star to the right
Early in the film, Peter enters the nursery where he spent so much time as a child, and it’s not clear whether he’s being charmed or haunted by his childhood. He glimpses a border at the top of the walls displaying the story of Peter Pan. There’s Skull Island, Tinkerbell, and Captain Hook and Smee escaping that clock-swallowing crocodile. It’s a beautiful image, hinting at the adventures to come.
But when the story begins to incorporate any magic, it’s too frantic and shrill.
The first problem, I’m sad to say, is Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. This was at the height of Roberts’ early megastardom, just a year after Pretty Woman, and getting her to play Tink is almost even more on the nose than getting Williams to play Peter Pan. In her best roles, Roberts is one of the most charismatic and naturally funny actresses we have, but here, she flitters on screen as if powered by Pixiesticks instead of pixie dust. She’s exuberant and spunky, but never once does her energy match that of anyone else on the screen. I don’t know that it’s her fault so much as the result of having to film her part isolated from the rest of the cast so they could composite her, but Roberts never makes a connection with anyone on the screen (and the one sequence in which she gets to play opposite Williams at regular size, it’s for an extremely ill-advised romantic interlude). It doesn’t help that the film constantly cuts back to Tinkerbell in shots obviously filmed at a different time than the rest of the cast, calling even more attention to her isolation.
But Roberts isn’t the film’s biggest issue. The film’s Neverland never matches those romantic, whimsical images we see on the nursery walls. It’s a cramped hodge-podge that very obviously was shot on a soundstage and looks like a tossed-together area at a theme park. The harbor area outside of the Jolly Roger (which, for some reason, is never seen at sea) is a cluster of rickety buildings and a barely glimpsed town square (the giant stuffed croc statue is pretty cool, though). We never view Skull Island or several of the mysterious locales of the original story; we do see mermaids, but they don’t look ethereal or magical so much as like Renaissance faire cosplayers.
Spielberg proved in E.T. that he could authentically capture childhood emotion and joy, but here, he panders. The Lost Boys’ den has no whimsy or magic to it; with a basketball court, skateboard ramp and tunnels, it’s just a McDonald’s Play Place designed by the Swiss Family Robinson. Rather than create a tone of mystery, adventure and danger, Spielberg loads it with screaming and yelling, garish food and paint fights, and way too many hits to the groin (complete with one moment where Williams then responds in a high-pitched squeak). The Lost Boys aren’t characters (with one exception that we’ll discuss later) but just a mob of precocious moppets Spielberg can use for cute, cuddly and/or funny reaction shots.
The Lost Boys are there, ostensibly, to help Peter learn to be a kid again so he can fight Captain Hook and rescue his kids. But the film papers over so much of that growth in favor of frantic chases, undercutting the emotion with a joke from Williams, and none of it sticks. Peter’s first “victory” is when he learns to verbally abuse another boy. It’s fitting that the happy thought that makes him able to fly again is of becoming a father, but it makes no sense when he forgets all about his kids shortly after. There’s one scene where Peter seems to completely regress back to childhood, but it’s waived away by an awkward kiss from Tinkerbell. The movie rushes through these sequences, leaning on John Williams’ (admittedly excellent) score for heavy emotional lifting, but all it does is pad out the second act to absurd lengths and give the impression of growth without any real emotional underpinning.
For a movie about Peter reconnecting with childhood through the joys of being a father, it’s curious that the film doesn’t simply allow his own kids to be with the Lost Boys so he can rediscover the joy of play, and it never introduces the idea of Peter Pan as a father figure to the Lost Boys. He learns to be a kid again, gets his kids back and the flits off to the real world, leaving them to their own.
And right now, I now that some fans of the film are going to say “What about Rufio?” And, yes, let’s talk about Rufio. The red-and-black-haired leader of the Lost Boys is the one member of the group to get some sort of arc, going from resentment of Peter Pan from leaving the group to appreciation of him. And I think Dante Basco is really good in the role; I like the way that he’s a bit of a bully but has a smirk that says it’s all in good fun. And as a kid, Rufio’s death at the hands of Captain Hook shocked me; a child seemed off limits in a movie like this. And at that age, his line “if I had a dad, I wish he was like you” drew tears.
But Rufio’s not a character, he’s a plot mechanism. He’s impressed by Peter’s ability to believe and fly again, but there’s never a scene where he and Peter connect or Peter gives him any fatherly words of wisdom or warmth. His death is surprising simply because kids don’t usually die in PG movies, but it only happens so that Jack can see how reformed his father has apparently become and reject his affections for Captain Hook. Rufio is just one of the strings Spielberg pulls to manipulate his audiences, and watching it again, it’s shocking how blatant that manipulation is from a director who usually is able to move viewers while hiding his bag of tricks.
Happy Thoughts
But I don’t want this to be 100-percent negative. Because while Hook is a mess, watching it again never felt like the same slog I endured with 1941 or Always. Like I said, John Williams’ score is wonderful, and Robin Williams was one of the best at bringing sincerity and warmth to films like this (ironically, the only times he falls flat in this movie is when he’s making jokes). Every once in a while, Spielberg delivers a transcendent shot; when a young Lost Boy smooths out the wrinkles in Peter’s face to find the child hiding beneath, it’s a classic Spielberg moment. And like I said, nearly everything in the film’s first 40 minutes works.
And the one thing that completely elevates this movie, going so far as to earn it almost a completely other star in my book, is everything having to do with Captain Hook. Dustin Hoffman is having the time of his life, chewing on every flamboyant strut or delicious turn of phrase. He’s vain, bored and contemptuous of everyone who is not him, and Hoffman is constantly very funny without undercutting Hook’s deviousness and danger.
He’s matched by Bob Hoskins as Smee, who might actually give the best performance in the entire movie. There’s a cartoon chemistry to Hoskins and Hoffman’s banter (a sequence where Hook contemplates suicide shouldn’t be nearly as funny as it is, but the two sell it because Hook’s melodramatic flair and Smee’s exasperation place it just this side of Bugs Bunny). It seems weird that a Peter Pan movie should be at its most playful in the scenes with Captain Hook, but it’s undeniable that these are the scenes that work. A sequence where Hook tries to teach Peter’s children “Why parents hate their kids” could be pulled from Looney Tunes, and the film’s pirate baseball game is often very funny, especially when one player shoots another for stealing second.
The film culminates in a sword fight that is a lot of fun. The choreography works, and the film moves with the child-like energy and joy that the previous Lost Boys sequences lacked. It’s a reminder that there isn’t nearly enough swash-buckling in today’s children’s movies. The movie’s final notes are pat, but Williams does sell the final line “to live will be an awfully big adventure” with the same sincerity that he did his entire carpe diem speech in Dead Poets Society.
Hook is a complicated film in Spielberg’s legacy. Critically, it’s seen as a fiasco, tied with The Lost World at 29% as the director’s lowest-rated film (personally, I can’t fathom how anyone thinks this is a worse film than Crystal Skull, Lost World, 1941 or Always). At the box office, it was fairly successful, coming in at around $119 million domestic, although it was a far cry from Spielberg’s biggest hits. It likely seemed that the bloom was off the rose for Spielberg, that after one of the greatest runs in box office history, he’d settled into a middle-of-the-road place, and this somehow lacked both the wonder and awe of his earlier movies and the grownup themes of The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun.
Seen as part of his overall career, Hook is very obviously a turning point movie for Spielberg. It’s him testing the waters with high concept again, and it’s a messy effort. It feels very much like Peter Pan trying to fly again, and the result is clumsy. But whatever it is, in hindsight it can be seen as Spielberg shaking the cobwebs off and getting ready to take a big leap.
Because 1993 would be arguably the greatest year of his entire career. But we’ll get to the first bit of that next week, when we return to Jurassic Park.