Butt News Movie Club #29: Hook
Should Peter Hit It One Time with Tink? Y/N/IDK/BANGARANG
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Today we’re focusing the Butt Microscope on all 137 deranged minutes of Steven Spielberg’s critical failure/box office smash Hook. As has been well-established, I’m freaking off me trolley for a fantasy story, but Peter Pan was never one of my top properties. It’s off-putting, sorry!
Pros:
Flying
The idea of Tinkerbell
Living in a treehouse with your best friends
Pirates (fun, hot, rich)
Kids in charge
Cons:
Racist
Tinkerbell in practice
Weird fixation on staying a little boy forever (creepy)
Clearly about death (depressing)
Never seeing your parents again
No offense, but that’s approaching Alice in Wonderland BOOK levels of “no thank you”!!! I hate these Victorian children’s stories that are all about the loneliness/spookiness/depressingness of childhood. Shut UP about children being little creepy wild alien creepy creatures creeping through sinister looking glasses and floating around talking about “wish I was dead”!!!!! STOP doing allegory about class and temperance on MY DIME and just give me a straight-up princess adventure or a hot fox doing direct action! Peter Pan (derogatory) has a BAD VIBE (personality disorder?) and would be a BAD BOYFRIEND and did you know that J.M. Barrie’s brother died in an ice skating accident at age 13 and was therefore “forever young” (pUkE) and Barrie would wear his dead brother’s clothes around to try and get his mother to pay attention to him, and also he had, let’s say, not-very-kickass feelings toward kids and, in fact, based Peter Pan on a boy he was obsessed with, who was so tormented by people calling him “the real Peter Pan” his whole life that eventually he threw himself in front of a train????????? Also this:
In a sense, the play groomed an entire generation to go willingly to the slaughter in World War I. "We hope our sons will die like English gentlemen," says Wendy, as the lost boys seem certain to be made to walk the plank. Ten years after the premiere, they did indeed start dying like English gentlemen on the fields of Flanders.
!!!!! SEE? Survey says CREEPY AND DEPRESSING!
That said, perhaps against type, as a kid I was big into Hook. I feel like Hook remedied my issues with Peter Pan in the following ways:
Robin Williams reminds me of my dad (comforting)
Tinkerbell 800% less of a homicidal bitch
Tiger Lily (and more crucially her father) ELIMINATED
Retcons the lore so that children and adults can travel back and forth to Neverland at will (as the Founding Fathers intended!!!!!!) i.e. you no longer have to choose between having fun/magic and having parents/a bed (ur next, narnia! #justice4suze)
I don’t think anyone’s son signed up to go to Bosnia because they wanted Smee to be proud of them
Now, I had not watched Hook in several generations, and I liked a lot of bad shit as a child, so my educated guess was that this movie was gonna blow. Plus, many Butt News readers have professed passionate hatred for Hook in the comments, and I would trust you all with my Life (cereal [gotcha]). So imagine my surprise when, idk, it was kinda bangarang! Sorry!!!!!!!! Get over it!
We’re at some little kids’ school play and they’re doing Peter Pan. Let’s just dispense with the charade at once—I was going to keep the secret of this movie until they reveal it in the movie, but whatever! You’ve all seen Hook, right? The gimmick is that Robin Williams is grown-up Peter Pan who’s lost all of his memories of Neverland and become an insufferable bitch.
He’s in the audience of this play—ABOUT HIMSELF—because his daughter Maggie is playing Wendy Darling, who is also his grandmother-in-law. Okay, so, right off the bat, you’re telling me that Peter Pan the fictional character exists in this universe, but Peter Pan the real person also exists and is still alive? Some old lady named Wendy is KNOWN to be the literal Wendy!?!? WHO SNITCHED??
Robin Williams answers his cell phone in the middle of the play because he’s big business boy who doesn’t care about children or their pitiful “art.” (Maybe if you paid a little more attention you might have ONE IOTA of deja vu about this extremely famous play based on YOUR LIFE AS A MAGIC FLYING BOY WHO PEEPING-TOMMED AT YOUR WIFE’S GRANDMA’S BEDROOM WINDOW FOR 400 YEARS?) Peter tells his work colleague that he’ll meet with him tomorrow morning about lawyer meeting, but tomorrow morning is when his asshole son, Run Home Jack, has his big baseball game!! And that’s really important, because there are famously only 1,376 games per baseball season. (In real life the actor who played Run Home Jack is a full-on Federalist Society right-wing lawyer now lololololol and probably the type of guy who WOULD answer his phone in the middle of a children’s play in the name of lawyer meeting, so don’t feel too bad for him!!!!! Wait, maybe that’s WHY he joined FedSoc! Don’t miss your kids’ baseball games or they may try to overthrow democracy!)
Robin Williams tells Run Home Jack that his word is his bond and he will definitely still make it to the baseball game, but it isn’t, and he doesn’t. He sends his assistant to videotape the game, which is actually not the same as parenting.
Jack goes up to bat but he can see that Robin Williams didn’t show up/doesn’t love him, so he loses focus and, as if this day could get any worse, the pitcher throws a curve ball, which is Run Home Jack’s achilles heel. He biffs it and he’s OUT. Do nine-year-olds even know how to throw a curve ball? Do little league teams really memorize the opposing children’s individual baseball weaknesses? How can you glance at the stands and determine in one millisecond that Robin Williams isn’t there? Maybe he’s just wearing a hat! Whatever, though. We have established that Jack now hates his dad and would like to curve ball him in the nuts.
Now they’re on the plane to London and Robin Williams is afraid of flying—IRONIC since we already know the SECRET of this MOVIE!!!!!!! Jack draws a picture of their plane crashing and everyone in the family has a parachute except for Robin Williams, and lmao, u roasted his ass, WATCH OUT, NIKKI GLASER!
Next, Run Home Jack bangs his baseball on the window of the airplane to terrify Robin Williams. Konk konk konk! (GET CONTROL OF YOUR KID.) Robin Williams begs him to stop.
Run Home Jack: “You’re afraid of getting sucked out!”
DAMN. Jeff Ross could never!
The whole Banning family (PETER BANning, do u see?) is going to London because “the hospital” is dedicating a new wing to “Grandma Wendy” for running the single greatest orphanage of all time, period—sorry, Mr. Brocklehurst, but I’m NOT gonna let you finish, you a-hole! Robin Williams was one of Grandma Wendy’s orphans (SUPPOSEDLY/I THINK1) before he was placed with his adoptive parents as a baby, and Grandma Wendy is also his wife Moira’s grandmother. You following? I’m not!
So, you’re telling me that all the OG Peter Pan stuff happened—the nursery window and the shadow and the thimble and spanking Tinkerbell to get her dust blah blah blah—and then at some point Peter Pan decided to leave Neverland forever and move back to earth, after which he lost his memory, MARRIED WENDY’S GRANDDAUGHTER, even though btw we don’t know how many years he was in Neverland before he showed up at the nursery window!!!!—he could have been 500 years old already! He could be from Ancient Egypt!! And then he went from Ancient Egypt to Neverland to London to 20th-century San Francisco and the first thing he did was GO TO LAW SCHOOL? He’s from Ancient Egypt and he wants to be a lawyer?! And now you’re telling me that his daughter Maggie played her own great-grandmother in a play and didn’t even bother to learn her lines????????? The disrespect!
I’m just doing some math here. So Hook came out in 1991 and let’s just say it’s set around the same time, and Peter Pan the play was written in 1904, so technically, if Grandma Wendy is 100 years old, I GUESS she could have gone to Neverland when she was 10, done that whole hullabaloo, come home and told her weird neighbor J.M. Barrie about it(!?!?!?), who then could have written and published the play three years after that, so that 87 years later Wendy’s great-granddaughter could do a half-assed job of it for drama club while the real Peter Pan watches. THE TIMELINE TECHNICALLY WORKS. I’m not loving how this math makes my brain feel, but the timeline technically works!
They arrive at Grandma Wendy’s house to get ready for the hospital party. Peter saunters in last and just leaves the front door open behind him even though there’s literally a blizzard on!!!!! Oh my god! This is how the romanticization of men as whimsical little “lost boys” drives straight women to the BRINK! We pan around the house and Granny Wendy has a framed picture of Peter from when he was young and hot. LOL, can you imagine being in a love triangle with a lawyer and your grandma???????? Actually, a love square with a lawyer, your grandma, and a very tiny Julia Roberts?
Granny Wendy’s housemate/butler/FWB(?) Tootles is bumbling around looking for his marbles. Robin Williams says, “I thought he was supposed to be in a home,” and someone explains that Tootles is Wendy’s first orphan so he gets to live with her forever (BOUNDARIES, Wendy!!!). So wouldn’t that mean that Toodles is Robin Williams’s childhood friend??? From another realm?????????? But neither of them remembers?????????????????????????
Run Home Jack fills in Granny Wendy (Maggie Smith, by the way) on his dad’s latest LinkedIn updates: if a company’s in trouble “my dad comes in and if there’s any resistance he blows them out of the water.”
Wendy, who’s never heard a figure of speech before I guess: “Peter, you’ve become a pirate.”
YEAH WELL UNFORTUNATELY LANDLORDS DON’T ACCEPT MARBLES AS CURRENCY, WENDY.
Maggie Smith is only 56 in this movie, but as discussed earlier, her character has to be at least 96 for it to work. Fun fact: Maggie Smith is actually only 16 years older than Robin Williams! Kill me! Don’t stop me this time, Smee!
Peter wanders up into the famous Darling nursery and looks out the famous Darling nursery window and then does his little Peter Pan hands on hips pose and you think he’s going to have a Big Memory but then BRAD CALLS with BAD NEWS about the MERGER! Robin Williams instructs Brad to go ahead and incinerate the spotted owl so that they can make $5 billion. Rudely, the kids (socialist-coded) are making a racket and he can’t hear Brad’s evil reply!
Robin Williams: “Won’t everybody just SHUT UP!!!!!”
Wendy cannot believe what she’s hearing. She almost got murked by Tinkerbell for this chucklehead2?? Moira guilt trips Peter about being a shitty father but he tells her no offense but Brad is his gay lover now and money is their son, figuratively, so he’s simply gotta take this call.
Moira, throwing Peter’s cellular telephone out the window into the snow: “No, you’ve gotta fix your family first.”
The dog grabs the cell phone and buries it deep under the ground and GOOD. I hope Nana XVIIIIIII took a shit on it too! Are we really still making dogs live outside in the snow? This dog and her mother before her and her mother before her and her mother before her have all been chained to the same dog house since Victorian times!? Reinstate the workhouse for the Darling family only!
Granny Wendy (narcissist) reads Peter Pan out loud to the kids, even though you’d assume everyone in the family would be sick of it by now. She explains that these were just “bedtime stories” that she made up with her brothers and then told to J.M. who stole and published them under his own name and it’s unclear why she never filed any copyright claims! Maybe that’s why Peter became a lawyer—so he can get his life rights back. (Do Little Richard’s royalties next!)
Peter catches Run Home Jack standing near the open window and yells at him again: “How often do I have to talk to you about playing near open windows!?” IDK, man, probably not that often???
As the adults are getting ready to leave for the hospital gala, Maggie mentions something about “that mean scary man at the window” who “says he’s a window washer.” YOU DIDN’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT THAT BEFORE? Could we take ONE second and fact-check whether or not Grandma Wendy hired a window washer to come by today? It’s not like Maggie is a little baby—she’s old enough to ACT IN A PLAY—but for some reason nobody takes this report seriously at all. Zero follow-up questions. Instead they’re like, “well, good luck,” and just head out to the hospital wing dedication leaving the kids under the protection of… Tootles????
At the gala, Peter makes a speech and all of Granny Wendy’s orphans stand up to honor her. Why are all of GW’s orphans so rich????
Meanwhile, back at the house, the dog is in the yard bork-bork-borking where it can be of no use to the imperiled children what on account of the CRUEL CHAIN, and Tootles wakes up and starts screaming, “HOOK! HOOK!” and looks in terror at his model of Captain Hook’s ship in a bottle. WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT? And why does Wendy have Captain Hook’s hook as her window clasp? He’s your worst enemy!!!
The doors and the windows all blow open with a great big fart that blasts the kids’ duvets clean off. The fart is so powerful it reaches all the way to the gala and messes up Gma Wendy’s hair! That’s what happens when you eat mostly colored paste.
The adults get home and it’s chaos. There are hook marks ALLL over the house and the kids are GONE. Captain Hook left a note saying yo peter u gotta come get ur kids.
Tootles: “Have to fly. Have to fight. Have to crow. Have to find Maggie and Jack. Hook is back.”
Peter: “Who?????”
Okay, even if you don’t remember being literal Peter Pan you obviously KNOW THE STORY—NO ONE IN THIS FAMILY EVER SHUTS UP ABOUT IT!
Ugh, I forgot about how Peter is always doing the crow. I hate the crow! It’s sick!
They call Phil Collins to come over and not solve the crime, and Granny Wendy asks Moira to get her a cup of tea. I’m sorry, I know you’re 108, but this woman has just had her children STOLEN BY A PIRATE, and you literally have a maid!!!! Can’t Liza get the tea!?
Wendy takes Peter aside and says, “It’s time to tell you at last.” She tells him to bring her copy of Peter Pan (Jesus, just keep one on a lanyard at this point) and asks Peter how much he can remember from childhood. He says he doesn’t remember anything before he was 12 or 13, and I guess he never thought that was weird before.
Wendy points to the book and is like, “PETER, THE STORIES ARE TRUE!” and Peter is like OH BOY GRANNY’S GON CRACKERS.
Wendy to Robin Williams: “You need to remember who you are” [points to picture of androgynous twink elf]
It’s so true—I actually have a hard time staying immersed in Tears of the Kingdom because I’m always stopping to be like, “Wait, is that a young Robin Williams????”
Peter does not like this information so he gets wasted in the empty nursery. A ball of fire flies in through the window and Peter tries to smash it to death, but then he realizes that it’s actually a very small flying woman. That’s why if you’re gonna kill a firefly you should always check to see if it’s fuckable first!
The fireball is Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell and, like, okay, now SHE looks like the kid in Wendy’s picture! I remember everyone was a dickhead about Julia-as-Tink at the time, I think because they didn’t make her sexy enough (LOL STRAIGHT MEN ARE DEFECTIVE), but how about Julia Roberts plays Peter Pan and Robin Williams plays Tinkerbell!?3 Literally a girl is supposed to play Peter Pan! But you cast the world’s most hirsute mailbox??
Anyway, Tinkerbell tries to convince Peter (again) that he’s the real Peter Pan, and I don’t know why the appearance of Tinkerbell in the flesh in Wendy Darling’s nursery isn’t compelling enough evidence for this purported LAWYER, but he still doesn’t believe her.
Tinkerbell: “I’m not a bug, I’m a fairy.”
Peter: “I don’t believe in fairies.”
Tinkerbell: “Every time someone says ‘I don’t believe in fairies’ there’s a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.”
JESUS!
Then Tinkerbell wraps Peter up in a sheet and flies him to Neverland against his will. Tootles watches them fly away and gives, I’m sorry to say it, a horny look.
Why is Tink so strong???
Peter wakes up and thinks it was all just a nightmare. but then he looks through a hole in the sheet and sees a clock going CRAYZAY! He’s in the Neverneverlandville Town Center and it’s all a-bustle. Who are all these regular people that live in Neverneverland?? Just trying to raise a family? But your kids NEVER GROW UP?? You’d have to sell soooooo much colored paste to afford diapers!
Peter immediately attracts a ton of attention and some pirates try to steal his Armani shoes, so Tinkerbell defends him, murdering many men in the process. She teaches Peter how to dress up like a pirate so he can blend in, and it’s a good thing, too, because Smee (Bob Hoskins) is standing right there at the hook shop getting Captain Hook’s hook sharpened! Now Smee is strutting through town like the HBIC.
“Put your faces on, girls, here comes SMEE!” – sex workers????
Why do the sex workers love Smee so much?? It’s giving Podrick. We stan a respectful and devoted client!
All the pirates start thronging together chanting, “Hook, hook, where’s the hook!?”
SMEE HAS IT. YOU’RE LITERALLY FOLLOWING HIM IN A PIRATE PARADE.
Smee gets on the mic and yells, “GOOD MORNING, NEVERLAND!” which is a reference to Good Morning, Vietnam, another Robin Williams movie of the era, and if you’re about to tell me that the actor Robin Williams ALSO exists in this universe and at some point Peter Pan is going to find out that he ALSO forgot about starring in The World According to Garp???????? ZIP IT.
Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman, eating) comes out and, oh no, unfortunately Captain Hook is Donald Trump. He calls the pirates “stupid parasitic sacks of entrails” and they’re like YAAAAYYYYY!!! Then he’s like “guess what I’ve kidnapped two children in order to punish their dad for illegally immigrating to Neverland and bothering me for 400 years” and they’re like YEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS. It’s exactly like a Trump rally! He probably tells the same story about the crocodile every day like Hillary’s e-mails!!
Hook says he’s gonna weed out a traitor and Peter thinks it’s definitely him, or at least David Crosby, but Hook picks this guy instead, and if your algorithm is anything like mine then 800,000 Instagram reels have already informed you that this is Glenn Close as Albert Nobbs in 40 pounds of special effects makeup:
She looks great, tbh! She’s giving Charlton Heston.
Glenn Close has to go in the boo box because she made a boo boo, and if you’re a person who likes to make annoying Instagram reels, I just found a new Mandela Effect for you! Apparently it’s the “boo box,” not the “boo boo box”!?!!?! YOKAY. The boo box is like a coffin with a hole in the lid so the pirates drop scorpions on people who make boo boos. Why not just keep the scorpions in the boo box? Do you keep them in a different box?? Isn’t storage at a premium on a ship?
Hook brings the kids out in a big net and Peter comes out and he’s like “hey those are my kids.” Great strategy!
Hook is like lmao noooooo there’s no way ur peter!!!1!!!1
Peter’s like yes I am!
Hook is like ok but you suck SO BAD! He is extremely disappointed that his great and worthy opponent has turned into a hairy lawyer.
Hook: “Not this pitiful bloated spineless pasty codfish! [stamps foot] I WANT MY WAR.”
Wow, he SHOULD run for president! Either party! Build the war! Build the war!
Peter takes out his checkbook, because that’s the only kind of war HE knows how to fight! The war of buying your kids back from thieves!
Hook is like ugh, fine, “I’ll make you a deal, Mr. Chairman of the Board.” How do you even know what that is? Do you have corporations in Neverland? Anyway, wouldn’t it be chairman of the plank????? SORRY!
Hook says that if Peter can fly up to where the kids are and touch their hands then he can have them back.
Peter: “I have a real problem with heights.”
Hook: “You must be joking.”
He’s not! He’s really really boring!
Peter tries to climb up the mast to get to the kids because he doesn’t know how to fly.
Tink: “Be the Pan you are. Fly.”
First of all, he doesn’t know how! He’s a lawyer! Tell him! Second of all, it’s creepy how Pan is his name, but they also act like Pan is a title. I hate it!
The kids are watching Peter with MAJOR attitude, like, come on dad don’t be such a loser. Maggie yells, “Come on, daddy, mommy could do it!” (Don Rickles just reanimated so he could die again!!!!!) You guys, he DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO FLY. You know he doesn’t know how to fly, because he’s your regular earth dad! How did flying suddenly become the baseline! Why don’t you try swinging back and forth in the net a little?? You just want to see if he can do it on principle?
Hook, disgusted, says, “Gentlemen, I have decided to cancel the war,” and tells the pirates to just slaughter Peter and Maggie and Jack and throw their bodies wherever. Tink zooms up like she’s Peter’s agent and says “give me one week to whip Pan into shape and then you can have your war of the century.”
Hook bargains her down to three days and they’re like DEAL. But then one of the pirates accidentally knocks Peter into the water and he’s gonna drown but he’s saved by three hot mermaids who blow air into his mouth! Peter is like OH YEAH, BOIOIOIOIOIOING, and like, dude, aren’t you cheating on Moira? Do you guys have some kind of arrangement?
Also, couldn’t you girls just swim him up to the surface? He’s only like four feet down. ALSO, do mermaids inhale water and exhale pure oxygen???????
Somehow the mermaids drop Peter off in the Lost Boys’ wacky jungle village and he immediately gets caught in a trap and hoisted up in the air where he joggles Tinkerbell’s clock house where I guess she was asleep?? You thought Peter drowned and you just WENT TO BED? Also, wouldn’t Hook think that Peter had drowned too and execute the kids??
The Lost Boys all wake up and freak the fuck out. One of the Lost Boys points out that Peter is “an old fat grandpa man.” Then Rufio skateboards in.
Rufio: “All grown-ups are pirates.”
Peter: “Excuse me?”
Rufio: “We kill pirates.”
Peter: “I’m a lawyer.”
Rufio: “Kill the lawyer!”
I’m sorry, do the Lost Boys LITERALLY KILL PEOPLE? Because that would be craaaaaaaaazyyyyyyy. Those are called child soldiers!
Tink is like yo, kids, he’s the real Pan, he married Wendy’s daughter, he lost his memory, and now he’s back and he has to rescue HIS kids, so “we have to make him bangarang.”
The Lost Boys are like, wow, that’s a really convoluted plot!
Peter runs away from the Lost Boys and sorry but 100 kids would definitely be able to catch him. He gets trapped in the halfpipe. Then they make him play basketball and he sucks. Rufio tries to kill him with a sword.
Rufio: “You’re dead, jolly man.”
LOL. Carve this on my tombstone, literally!
Rufio: “You can’t fly, fight, or crow.”
Okay, he could definitely crow. Is crowing hard? What is this crowing thing with you guys!?
Rufio draws a line on the ground and says that anyone who believes “this scug ain’t Peter Pan” should stand on the other side of the line. Peter crosses the line. A good bit!!!!
Tink drags Peter back across the line. “You are embarrassing me!” The wisest tiniest kid stays on Peter’s side of the line. He takes Peter’s lawyer glasses off and squishes his face: “Oh there you are, Peter!” Then all the Lost Boys run back across the line to also squish Peter’s face. “Welcome back to Neverland, Pan the Man!”
Rufio says that actually he’s got Pan’s sword, so he’s the Pan now. So, was Rufio not a Lost Boy when Peter was there? Are they getting new Lost Boys all the time? Wouldn’t the number just grow exponentially?? Or are the pirates there to cull the herd? Or do most Lost Boys eventually Break Amish and go home to grow up and have sex with their ex’s granddaughter??
Meanwhile Hook is having an existential crisis.
Hook: “I hate living in this flawed body.” [Add it to the tombstone spreadsheet!!]
Smee: “Are you getting dramatic?”
Hook is depressed because Peter is old and fat, so he decides he is going to shoot himself in the head with a musket. I know that this scene is probably not really okay by modern ethical standards, but it’s sooooooo funny.
Hook: “This is not a joke! I’m committing suicide!”
Wow, Hook’s bedroom even looks like Trumps bedroom! Smee is Rudy Giuliani.
Hook says that he’s tired and wants to go beddy-bye, and also that he wants to kill Peter Pan. Smee comes up with a genius plan—instead of killing Jack and Maggie, Hook should make them love him like a father, and that will really ruin Pan’s life!
“The ultimate revenge—Pan’s kids in love with Hook.” I mean, not IN LOVE. Right? We misspoke there, right?????
Smee waxes Hook’s mustache with his earwax.
Back in the treehouse village, the Lost Boys are singing a really abusive song about weight loss: “Gotta lose a million pounds! Get your fat butt off the ground! Swing your arms around your back/give yourself a heart attack!”
I’m going to say, just practically speaking, if you only have three days to prepare for war, you don’t have to spend a day on weight loss.
For flight training, the Lost Boys paint Peter’s nipples (???), then tell him to think happy thoughts such as horseys, bugs, berfdays, and gum. They put Peter in a giant slingshot and shoot him into the air. It doesn’t work.
Now Hook starts homeschooling the children and trying to win them over, but like, again, THEY KNOW WHO CAPTAIN HOOK IS! They know the story!!! They know he’s the bad guy!
For phase one of Hook’s extremely subtle plan to turn Jack and Maggie against their parents, he tells them that their parents hate them: “Before you were born they were happier. They were free.”
Maggie sees right through this incredibly subtle ruse and is like nu uh, so Hook gives her an F. lol
Maggie can’t BELIEVE she got an F! Mags, it’s not real school!
Hook identifies Jack as the weak link here and decides to drop the hammer. He’s like hey, Jack, remember how your dad went to Maggie’s play but not your bball game? Which, fair, but HOW DOES HE KNOW THAT? He’s been doing background research on this entire family but he didn’t believe Peter was the real Pan? Then WHY DID HE TARGET HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Maggie: “I hate you, Mr. Hook!”
Whoa, whoa, whoa, he didn’t go to 12 years of pirate school to be called Mr. Hook.
Maggie can see that Jack is falling under Hook’s spell, but he won’t listen to her: “Neverland makes you forget, Jack! Never forget mommy and daddy! Find a way to run home, Jack! Run home!” What a weird thing to say unless you’re planning to use it as a catchphrase later in the movie!
Back in the Lost Boyzone, it’s time for dinner. Peter is soooooo excited. I, too, love food cooked by feral five-year-olds. They open up all the chafing dishes but there’s no food in there! All the kids are CHOWING DOWN ON THE INVISIBLE FOOD and Peter is like wtf!? The kids say ha ha dumbass you have to IMAGINE the food, don’t you have any IMAGINATION, haven’t you ever eaten FOOD before? Which, like, I get this is a whimsical magical situation, but doesn’t that kind of sound like abandoned, impoverished children with no social safety net creating a shared delusion to distract themselves from starving to death?? Or, alternatively, it’s cute! The fat Lost Boy, whose name, BY THE WAYYYEEEEEE, is THUD BUTT, takes a huge bite of a huge invisible sandwich.
Peter is so hungry that he challenges Rufio to a rap battle:
Rufio: “Eat your heart out, you wrinkled fatbag!” “Paunchy sag-bottomed puke pot!” “Hemorrhoidal suck-navel!” “Boil dripping beef fart sniffing bubble butt.”
Peter: “Someone has a severe caca mouth.”
Rufio: “YOU ARE A FART FACTORY!”
Wow, my inner monologue is gonna sue for plagiarism!!!!!!
Peter is severely outclassed until something snaps inside of his braingarang and he says the magic incantation that transforms him from a human lawyer back into child mayor of the Manson Family Treehouse:
“Lewd crude rude back of pre-chewed food dude!!!!!!”
Rufio (posterized): “You man! You stupid stupid man!”
At this point Rufio, a child, seems reeeeeeeeeally really really sad and upset, but Peter, an adult man, continues to kookslam him relentlessly. He calls Rufio a “paramecium brain,” which is “a one-celled critter with no brain that can’t fly. Don’t mess with me man, I’m a lawyer!!!” And then, still not stopping: “Rufio, why don’t you just go suck on a dead dog’s nose?”
Dude, you don’t have to ACTUALLY KILL HIM! He’s literally just a boy who is lost!
As his final insult, Peter picks up an “empty” spoon and throws some “food” at Rufio’s face. To his surprise, the nothing turns into real food! Kind of! It’s more like sour cream mixed with Sherwin-Williams, but the kids seem to like it!
At last Peter can see the grand feast before him: different colors of buttercream pooped in a pie tin, leaves, like just regular leaves from a tree, turkey legs, more buttercream mudpies, rocks, fruit pile, a whole turkey, buttercream, a coconut, and Thud Butt’s personalized wedge of cheese with his face carved into it. Like, okay, you’re telling me 20 pre-pubescent boys could imagine any food in the galaxy and that’s what they picked? Not ONE pizza bagel?? They just want to hit those protein macros??
It must also be said, this food does not look good.
The kids are like, “You’re doing it, Peter! You’re playing with us!” and then they all have a bangarang food fight until Rufio creeps up from behind and attempts to bludgeon Peter to death with the coconut. Absolutely wild thing to do. Peter is too quick and cuts the coconut in half with a sword. Now he is truly Pan Bangarang. Rufio worms away in disgrace and nobody cares. Fairweather fans! That guy was your BEST FRIEND AND KING 30 seconds ago until this lawyer learned to use his imagination!
Thud Butt gives Peter Tootles’s marbles and asks if he can deliver them: “These are his happy thoughts.” Now I would never break ranks with Thud Butt, I trust him with my life, but 1) why do you have those, and 2) how do you know where Tootles lives and why do you assume Peter is going to move back there??
Thud Butt asks Peter if he remembers his mother and they have a talk about mothers and back on the pirate ship Maggie is singing a special song to help Jack remember their mother and the pirates like the song too and they wish Maggie was their mother, which is healthy considering that she is six.
The Lost Boys go to bed and Captain Hook is asleep and his mustache is twitching in time with Jack’s special pocket-watch that Robin Williams gave him at the beginning that I forgot to mention. Captain Hook HATES CLOCKS because of the time his hand was eaten by the crocodile that had swallowed a clock, which, by the way, he apparently defeated and turned into a taxidermy clocktower in the town square, even though in the original I think the crocodile wins. Now Hook smashes every clock he finds because he is a #triggered #lib!!!!!!!!!
He shows Jack his museum of smashed clocks and tells Jack to smash the pocket-watch, which he does, which is crazy. You have known this man for one day (plus a lifetime as a LEGENDARY BAD GUY) and you are forsaking your father for him??
Jack: “This is for never letting me blow bubbles in my chocolate milk!” [smash]
No offense except yes offense: 1) Why do you want to and 2) why didn’t he let you?
Hook is like wowwwww isn’t it crazy how your dad doesn’t love you at all and didn’t save you on the ship? and Jack goes, “He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even try. He was there and we were there and he didn’t try.” First all, he did try, because he climbed up the mast thingy, and second of all, are kids really this easy to manipulate?
Hook: “Have I ever made a promise I have not kept? Have I, SON?”
Jack: [SNIFF]
YOU GUYS DON’T KNOW EACH OTHER.
Now they play crappy baseball in the town square. The Lost Boys wear disguises to spy and Peter sneaks up behind Hook. He’s about to steal Hook’s hook but then he sees Jack is up to bat! Peter gets totally distracted! This resonates sooooooooo hard with my ADHD brain!
Hook: “This is for all the games your daddy missed. Hook would never miss your game, son.”
The pirates in the crowd have made signs that say “run home Jack” and Jack gets distracted by them for a second, like “run… home… Jack,” because that’s what Maggie told him to do, but then the pirates switch it around so it says “home run Jack” and he’s BACK IN THE GAME. Dude, grow a memory!
Peter sees the catcher signal for a curve ball and whispers, “He can’t hit the curve.” WHY DO YOU CARE IF HE WINS THE FAKE BASEBALL GAME THAT A PIRATE DESIGNED TO ALIENATE HIM FROM YOU?
Jack hits a home run. Now he’s really Home Run Jack!
Hook: “My Jack!
Peter: “MY Jack!”
Peter has officially lost the holiday spirit. He takes off his pirate costume and trudges back to treehouse village like a baby. This isn’t fun anymore now that his neglected son has become Captain Hook’s Home Run Jack! Thud Butt is SO MAD that Peter would give up like this. Thud Butt would never give up [on eating cheese]!
Peter tries to fly but he can’t, and then he gets hit in the head by Jack’s home run and falls down and looks at his reflection in the pond but it’s the reflection of his younger self instead.
Peter’s shadow points him to a special tree where all their names are carved—Peter, John, Wendy, Michael, and Tootles. A secret hatch opens in the tree and Peter goes inside and it’s Wendy’s house! And Tinkerbell is in there… in her wedding gown?
Finally Peter remembers everything! He remembers the whole layout and all the furniture and where everyone used to sit. He finds his teddy, which he—an imagination expert—named “Teddy.”
Peter: “Mother used to put him in the pram to keep me company… I remember my mother.”
Now Peter has a flashback to how he got separated from his original parents. It was the classic baby carriage rolls away while mom is talking about what law school her baby is going to go to. Oh, wait, actually it’s implying that the newborn baby made the carriage roll away because it couldn’t handle the pressure of law school?? Peter says he didn’t want to grow up because after you grow up you DIE so as a baby he “ran away” by pushing his own baby carriage off a cliff, and then Tinkerbell found him and kidnapped him to raise as her child husband.
Peter: “Tink, you came and you saved me, you brought me to Neverland, you taught me to fly! But I was still a little boy and I missed my mother so I decided to fly home to my very own window, but it was shut, they’d forgotten me.”
So then he started going to other random windows looking for mothers, and that’s how he met Wendy. Then they show a flashback of Peter meeting young Wendy and she is Gwyneth Paltrow, if u care.
Then one day Gwyneth becomes old and is like, “Peter, I can’t come with you, I’ve forgotten how to fly, I’m old, Peter.”4
And Peter is like EW!!!!!!! But THEN he sees Moira and he is like HOMINA HOMINA A-OOGA. He wants to give Moira a kiss, but Wendy is like NO, PETER, no thimbles!5 I don’t want her to wake up and be disappointed! Which is a weird-ass thing to say, imo!!!!!!!
Peter: “No, I mean a real kiss.”
DO NOT KISS THIS SLEEPING CHILD. But u know he does!
Then adult Peter remembers becoming “a daddy.” He says that wanting to be a daddy with Moira is why he moved back to earth and why he decided to grow up. That’s his happy thought—being a daddy! HE CAN FLY AGAIN! He starts flying around.
I’m confused. Is Peter the only Lost Boy who can fly? I feel like in the real story they can all fly. I mean, if Wendy can fly then the Lost Boys can definitely fly!! Oh, wait, they probably just can’t have the Lost Boys fly in the movie because it would cost a fortune in harnesses and stuntboys.
Peter flies by and cuts Rufio’s pants off. Stop bullying Rufio!!!!!!! Now Peter is SO good at basketball! He acts like it’s really cool that he can dunk, but, like, you can fly. Of course you can dunk. Not being able to fly is the main thing that makes dunking cool. Rufio comes at him with a sword, and you think there’s trouble again, but he just kneels down and presents it to Peter. Rufio admits that Peter is the Pan. He can fight, he can fly and he can crow. (I wish he’d stop, but yes, he can crow.)
Peter finds Tink crying and he thinks that means she’s sick, so he’s like, “Maybe you need a thermometer—that’s how Nibs made the Wendy-lady better.”
Sorry, does he not have his lawyer memories now???? Why is he talking like that?!??!
Peter peeks inside of Tinkerbell’s house and she has Peter’s driver’s license, credit card, and BMW key on her wall. She’s a gold-digger!! Then Tink does a magic spell and makes herself person-size and breaks her house so she can shoot her shot with Peter.
Peter: “You’re humongous.”
She says that being in love with Peter is the biggest feeling she’s ever ever felt and this is the first time she’s been big enough to have it and then she gives Peter a real kiss, not a thimble.
Peter (tactful): “I love Moira and Jack and Maggie.”
Now Peter remembers about his other life! And he has a plan to fix everything. Tink gives up immediately and is like okay go off queen I get it no prob.
The Lost Boys get all geared up in popsicle stick armor. Hook has dressed Jack up like a tiny Hook and he’s going to pierce his ear with his hook, which is not the proper tool at all. But then there’s Peter just in time to save Jack’s earlobe! He cut a hole in the sail in the shape of himself, which would take soooooooo long and truly just a slit would work. Or go around?
Jack: “Who is that, Captain?”
Peter: “Jack, give me your hand, we’re going home.”
Jack: “I am home!”
DUDE, JUST LEAVE HIM. HE SUCKS.
Peter sword-fights all the pirates at once and gets caught in a net, but then he yells “Bangarang” and all the Lost Boys attack the ship with the world’s slowest battle barge that they built out of trash and a machine gun that shoots eggs. Now there’s ten minutes of absolute chaos.
Rufio has a WAY smaller role in this movie than I remembered. Never has an actor made such a cultural impact in 13 seconds of actual screen time! Most people ONLY remember Rufio from this movie!!!
Peter says, “Get ready to show them the white light we’re made of, boys!” which is weirdly poetic, and then they blind the pirates with mirrors and shoot them with more eggs. They also have a gun that shoots marbles, causing all of the pirates to slip and fall. For some guys who bragged a lot about slaughtering pirates bigtime, your weapons are surprisingly non-dangerous-at-all!
Hook tells Smee to “do something intelligent,” so Smee runs away and steals a bunch of Hook’s jewels. Lol!
Thud Butt activates something called “Thud Ball” where he puts his legs behind his head and the Lost Boys roll him down the stairs, knocking all the pirates over. He does Thud Ball twice in a row, and then bashes David Crosby in the nads.
Crosby got his stills nashed! Sorry!!!!!
Jack all of a sudden is like why am I wearing this dumb coat? I’m so hot! Maggie tries to escape out the window but then the pirates get her. Peter is about to fight Hook, but he hears Maggie screaming so he flies away, and now Rufio fights Hook instead. Jack realizes that Peter Pan is his dad. The Lost Boys advance, the pirates surrender, the Lost Boys yell “bangarang,” Hook and Rufio fight, Rufio gets the upper hand and says, “Looky looky I got Hooky,” but you shouldn’t count your Hookies before they’ve lookied! While Rufio is distracted by gloating, Hook stabs him right in his middle and he DIES!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!
Rufio, DYING, to Peter: “Do you know what I wish? I wish I had a dad. Like you.” – Rufio [DIES]
Now Jack is like oooooooook, this is a LOT, I’m ready go home. Hook is legitimately confused because he thought Jack loved him for real (awww!). Hook says Peter has to come back and fight him to the death or he’s going to send him creepy notes forever. Peter agrees to fight one on one.
Peter: “I remember you being a lot bigger.”
Hook: “To a 10-year-old I’m huge.”
The Lost Boys all watch them fight and cheer Peter on. You guys, Rufio DIED! How come no one is crying??
Hook tells Peter that this is all just a dream and when he wakes up he’ll be Peter Banning, loser lawyer, and Peter starts to lose hope, but then all the kids and Tink say “I believe in you!” so Peter keeps fighting. And then all the kids have clocks! Hook says “Aaaahhhh!!!” Peter wins!
Peter rips off Hook’s wig and he looks like a dandelion under there. Peter is going to murder him in front of everyone, but Jack and Maggie convince him not to.
Peter: “You killed Rufio. You kidnapped my children. You deserve to die.”
Hook: “Strike, Pan. Strike true.”
Maggie: “He’s just a mean old man without a mommy.”
Jack: “Yeah, Dad, let’s go. He can’t hurt us anymore.”
Ok he literally can tho!
Pan tells Hook to take his ship and leave Neverland forever. But Hook has one more hook trick up his hook! He rockets a secret sword out of his crotch! He’s about to kill Peter but then Tink blocks his hook and it goes into the taxidermied crocodile clock and the clockodile falls on Hook and squishes him but not to death. I guess maybe he… lives in there now?
Hook: “I want my mommy!”
Peter says “bangarang” and is ready to party but Maggie and Jack are like ummmm can we GO? Peter tells the Lost Boys that he can’t play now because Jack and Maggie want to go home.
Peter: “Tink, make my kids glow”
Sorry, the kids don’t want to stay and play at the MAGIC TREEHOUSE for like one day???? Peter tells the kids to think happy thoughts and Maggie is like “mommy!” which is a SIIIIICK burn after everything Peter just dealt with, but Jack says “my dad.”
Peter says goodbye to the Lost Boys: “You’re all my Lost Boys. I’ll never forget you.” YOU ALREADY DID ONCE. THAT’S WHAT THIS WHOLE MOVIE IS ABOUT.
Peter leaves Thud Butt in charge! My guy!!
WHERE IS RUFIO’S BODY
Are you gonna go get it?
Does Rufio become the new clock since the crocodile fell over??
The kids fly back in through the nursery window and find their mom asleep, so THEY DECIDE NOT TO WAKE HER UP and instead just get into bed so she’ll find them there later, like they’re playing a prank on her to make her think that she’s crazy. It works!
Peter wakes up outside in the snow and nearby Smee is sweeping up trash. I don’t know if that means he exists in both universes (not the case with anyone else!!!!!!!!) or he stole Hook’s gold and moved to London to be an overnight street-sweeper, but ????
Tink tells Peter she’ll always love him “in the space between sleep and awake” and that’s where she’ll be waiting. Okay, but here’s what I don’t get, why can’t Peter just go to Neverland any time he wants? It seems like he literally can! Tinkerbell can’t visit San Francisco?
Peter digs up his cell phone and answers it. It’s Brad! He’s still on the line! Peter climbs up the drainpipe and reunites with the whole fam in the nursery. He goes to the open window and pranks Jack with a callback to earlier: “What did I tell you about this window?”
Jack: [horrified that his dad still sucks]
Peter: “ALWAYS KEEP IT OPEN!”
Always?????
Peter throws the cell phone out the window again.
Maggie: “Fly me, daddy, fly me!”
You want him to throw you out the window?
Peter gives Tootles his marbles back and Peter and Wendy share an erotic hug. Now Tootles is flying away. He goes back to Neverland I guess?
Then Peter says that “to live will be an awfully big adventure,” which isn’t really as impactful as “to die will be an awfully big adventure,” because it’s like, yes, all adventures take place while living??
NOW CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE LET THE DOG GO INSIDE
Except, wait. If I’m understanding this correctly, and I’m definitely NOT, I think the part about Peter living in Wendy’s orphanage and Mr. and Mrs. Banning (who maybe… don’t exist??) adopting him is just a cover story to hide the fact that actually Peter was rescued/STOLEN as a baby by Tinkerbell and raised in Neverland by a bunch of dirty kids?? Is that right? And someone (Wendy??) used CIA brainwashing techniques to plant false memories of a normal childhood in Peter Banning’s brain? Or did Tinkerbell deliver baby Peter to the Bannings (because the orphanage didn’t exist yet) where he grew up until he was Pan-aged at which point he became growing-up-negative and ran away to Neverland until he got horny for Moira and came back and grew up… alone on the streets? But then the Wikipedia for Hook says that, “After Wendy and her siblings returned to London, Peter frequently visited Wendy until she had been widowed and had grown too old to fly back to Neverland. Although both were heartbroken that they had missed their opportunity of romantic love, Peter fell in love with Wendy's granddaughter Moira and chose to stay. He became adopted by the Bannings, followed his birth-father's legal career path, married Moira and fathered his children with her.” First of all, ew, but second of all, THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE, BECAUSE THEN WHERE DOES THE AMNESIAC PETER BANNING *THINK* HE GREW UP?? If he spent 400 years as a perma-boy in Neverland and then was adopted by the Bannings when he left Neverland circa age 12, where do the BANNINGS think Peter lived in the 12 years before he ended up at Granny Wendy’s orphanage? Can somebody ask them?? AND WHY DOES IT SAY HE FOLLOWED HIS “BIRTH FATHER’S” LEGAL CAREER PATH? WHO IS THAT!?!? THE CROCODILE??????????
Hollywood consider this my pitch 2 helm the reboot!!!!!!!!!!!
But whyyyyyyyy would Wendy become “too old” to fly if Peter the Pirate Lawyer isn’t too old to fly!?!?!? And Captain Hook can just bop back and forth to London to steal kids? I do not understand the mechanics of this stupid universe!
I didn’t explain the thimble thing earlier. Do I have to explain it? You probably remember. If not, just Google peter pan wendy thimble. God, I could have just explained the thimble thing instead of typing all this!
Crosby got his stills nashed BY THE YOUNG-- not sorry at all
Had to stop reading and take a beat to process that the child actor who played Jack turned into a right wing lawyerNOOOoooo!! 😆😭🫣