A Lost Darling: A ‘Wendy’ Film Review
by Will Lindus
A modern retelling of the classic Peter Pan story, 2020’s Wendy follows a young girl from a rural town who, along with her brothers, finds herself swept away to a mysterious island where time itself pauses and aging halts for children who keep joy and adventure in their hearts. She soon finds out that even her eternal playground paradise comes with a price, as those children who begin to feel themselves pulled down by negative emotions like worry or despair age swiftly into broken adults unable to enjoy the splendors of the island. Wendy soon finds herself fighting for herself and for her family as the ideologies of reckless youth and forlorn adulthood clash.
Director Benh Zeitlin’s re-imaging of the Neverland story with Wendy as the protagonist is dripping with the cinematic language that helped put Zeitlin on the map with his last feature, 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. Like the youth on the island, Zeitlin tactfully employs reckless cinematography which adds to the spontaneous chaos of the island. The hand held camera movement, the focus on quiet close-ups, the beauty the shots somehow find even when the kids are covered in dirt and grime partner with the majestic, fantastical score by composer Dan Romer (who also worked with Zeitlin on Beasts of the Southern Wild) to create a feast for the senses. This film looks and sounds great.
Unfortunately, the narrative is where Wendy begins to fall apart. Zeitlin works best when the stories he tells can rely more heavily on unfocused storytelling beats to create an atmospheric mood piece that elevates what his actors are doing and what his characters are feeling. Being beholden to the classic Peter Pan story itself, and having to find ways to squeeze Peter Pan, Neverland, the Lost Boys, the pirates, and more into this tale work at odds with the more abstract-adjacent techniques where he feels most comfortable. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the biggest strike against Wendy is that it has to exist with the current mythos instead of operating as its own unique story. Is this unfair to Zeitlin, who tries so hard here to put his own spin on a familiar story? Perhaps. But it is also the stark truth of adaptations that comparisons to source material and previous adaptations are unavoidable.
To their credit, the child actors in Wendy all do a phenomenal job, further highlighting just how adept Zeitlin is at working with children. The lead, Devin France as Wendy, carries a remarkable amount of sobering maturity for being only 9 years old, and the feral forever-child of Peter Pan is played with tenacity by young actor Yashua Mack. But without a more focused story for these performances, the children feel, well, like an actual group of Lost Boys (and girl) flailing without direction, and while this could have been the intended effect, it didn’t make for a gripping story.
Bottom Line: The idea of a reimagining of Peter Pan through Wendy’s perspective is a noble one that has the potential to provide new context for how it must feel for a young girl to be thrust into the role of ‘mother figure’ for a bunch of young, unsupervised boys her own age. Unfortunately, this isn’t that film, and director Benh Zeitlin’s tremendous filmmaking talents are left underutilized in a meandering story.
2.5 out of 5 Bear Paws