Peter Pan (1953)

Directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi & Wilfred Jackson. Starring (voices) Hans Conried, Kathryn Beaumont, Bobby Driscoll, Bill Thompson, Paul Collins, Heather Angel, Tommy Luske, Candy Candido. [G]

Disney’s animated take on J. M. Barrie’s play about the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up is thin on story, stunted, superficial, and turbulently-paced, but not a total wash. There’s an enchanting moment or two, like the playful, soaring flight across London, and Captain Hook is a colorful baddie with some funny slapstick exchanges with bumbling first mate Smee, but Peter Pan himself is practically a marketing gimmick—relentlessly talked up, but the “payoff” has no substance (in fact, it’s the only one of Disney’s animated features where the villain has a more substantial onscreen role than the hero). Dated attitudes and stereotypes are prevalent in 20th-century animated classics from the studio, but this is one where it damages the integrity of the entire movie: the misadventures with the Indians (Native Neverlanders?) lack purpose and excitement, and leads to a song that’s not catchy enough to encourage an apologetic stance to its racism (“What Made the Red Man Red?”), and the movie’s viewpoints on preadolescents and females are borderline appalling even with historical perspective—how many catfights are going to break out with every female in sight (fairies, mermaids, etc.) desperate for Pan’s affections? This was the last movie Bobby Driscoll, the voice of Peter Pan and Disney’s first contracted child star, made for Walt. A Disney MovieToon sequel (Peter Pan: Return to Never Land) was released in 2002, along with a flood of spin-off straight-to-video features starring the jealous, duplicitous fairy, Tinker Bell.

49/100