Pan

This is the alleged back-story of Peter Pan, telling how Peter (Levi Miller) and Hook (Garrett Hedlund) started out as best pals. Let's not mince words: This movie stinks. Jason Fuchs' witless, charmless script is as ignorant of J.M. Barrie's original as if he had never heard of it, while Joe Wright's graceless direction and the gaudy, vulgar CGI fail to provide any real magic. Young Miller is a cipher, Hedlund struts around like a bad Harrison Ford impersonator and Hugh Jackman camps it up as the villain Blackbeard. Rooney Mara's Tiger Lily preserves some dignity, but she fails to avoid the general train wreck. Worst of all is the thought that this travesty (and its sequel) may pre-empt a movie of Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's Peter and the Starcatchers, which treats the same idea with all the wit and fun that's missing here. J.L.