Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

I don't hate it, I just find certain things unappealing. To get it out of the way. I can't stand Tinker Bell, and I really don't know why a character this cruel and selfish has become a Disney icon!? Heck, she tries to kill off Wendy more than once and is stupid enough to believe Captain Hook! And I really don't like the indian stereotypes in this movie. I hope parents of today will take the talk with their kids about such things in movies and media in general. Besides that we get wonderful animation as usual (the flight scene over London towards Neverland is one of my favourite scenes from any Disney movie) and mostly highly enjoyable characters. Captain Hook and Peter Pan are just hilarious together. The crocodile and Hook make some great slapstick comedy worth a fortune. And a couple of memorable songs like "You Can Fly" and "Following The Leader". The ending should be a reminder to every parent who blame their children for being children. It's a wonderful lesson to learn for the parents.

When Sir James M. Barrie died in 1937, he left the copyright of Peter Pan to the Ormond Street Children's Hospital, who proved rather tough to deal with when Walt Disney approached them in the late 1940s. To placate them, Disney proposed to deal constructively with the three main criticisms leveled against Herbert Brenon's 1924 production: (1) He would use the same actor to voice both Darling and Hook; (2) He would not countenance Brenon's ill-advised change of setting from London to New York; and (3) He would give far more color and attention to the key role of Tinker Bell (rather inadequately played by Virgina Brown Faire in the Brenon version-which fortunately didn't matter a great deal as the role was rather small, in both senses of that word).True to his word, Disney delivered-and delivered magnificently on these three issues: (1) Hans Conried does supremely well by Hook and makes an excellent stab at Darling (even though hampered by the screenplay's tendency to make the character far too blustery and slapstick a figure). (2) It's good to see Big Ben back in the limelight, rather than a somewhat incongruous Old Glory. (3) The highly attractive yet supremely malicious Tinker Bell emerges as one of Disney's most inspired creations. Unfortunately, on other (and even more important issues) Disney has chosen to compromise. It was to be expected that Nana would become a Disney dog -= a Pluto clone-because there was no way you could picture a man dressed up as a dog (and a bitch at that) in a cartoon. Okay, even steven.Peter Pan is no longer a girl playing at being a boy, let alone an extremely sexy young lady who seems blissfully unaware of her provocativeness. That also was inevitable, even though you have now eliminated from the pantomime both the Dame and the Principal Boy. But even taking this into account, Peter Pan himself distills only a tiny fraction of the charisma that Betty Bronson so superlatively lent the character. Bobby Driscoll, who was so brilliant as a youngster and deservedly received a prestigious Hollywood award in 1950, seemed to lose his ability as he grew older. Here his performance is adequate at best, just tolerable at worst. So, two minuses for Disney. As might be expected, Wendy is no longer an adult playing at being a very young teenager. On the other hand, Disney obviously does not see her as a fresh-faced kid either. In fact, her age tends to vary a bit. She looks much older in some scenes than in others. And she's inadequately voiced by Kathryn Beaumont (who did such a good job with Alice). The main problem for me, however, is that Wendy's worried-looking, overly mature face makes her look so unattractive. This focuses my attention on Tinker Bell instead. But Wendy is supposed to be a main character (and a highly sympathetic one at that), so another two minuses for Disney. I found the songs a mixed bunch. In my opinion, the liveliest were "What Makes the Red Man Red?" and "Never Smile at a Crocodile." So, it's even steven on the songs. But speaking of the crocodile, I loved him. He came over with far more spirit and a hundred times more personality here than in the Brenon film. So there's a definite plus to Disney. Many critics didn't take to Mr. Smee, but I enjoyed his antics, so one more plus to Disney.Loathed in Britain, and received with indifference in Australia, this is a Peter Pan aimed squarely at Americans. Although it bears a considerable resemblance to Barrie's pantomime, it is in fact a pantomime no longer but an unsatisfactory compromise between a cartoon and a stage play. True, a fair amount of Barrie remains, but it's mostly superficial stuff. Just about all Barrie's important ideas and the majority of his telling lines are omitted. Disney made a large issue of the fact that he had restored Barrie's plan by casting the same actor as Hook and Darling. But what's the point of restoring the casting if the whole point of this relationship has been lost? AVAILABLE on DVD through Disney. Quality rating: Ten out of ten.

Disney had returned to the feature film arena in the late 1940's. Many of the features that he produced in the 1950's were intended to be produced in the early 40's, but economic and labor setbacks as well as WWII put those projects on hold. It it interesting to see how Peter Pan would have looked had it been released in 1941 or 1942. Disney's Peter Pan doesn't glamorize childhood, but rather shows the dark side of the ultimate child's fantasy. Wendy doesn't want to grow up, but after numerous bad experiences with virtually every local at Neverland, she sees the light and desires to move on with her life. (A similar theme of a girl fantasying about another world despite her superior's objections, only for her to come to mature after experiencing turmoil was previously explored in Alice In Wonderland). The depiction of Native Americans and use of ethnic slurs has been controversial in recent years, but Disney hasn't pulled this out of circulation, nor has there been any significant pressure to do so. I sensed that they intended these to be fun characters. This is probably one of the most colorful and lush of Disney's post-war films. Mary Blair made excellent color designs for the Darling's nursery and the many Neverland spots. One could only imagine what the picture would have looked like had it been produced a decade earlier when they went all out on lush pictures. Despite some blatant Native American stereotypes, this has remained a beloved classic well into the 21st century.

Well, even a lesser Disney movie like "Peter Pan" will still be a first-rate animated movie as far as, you know, animation goes. If the 1953 movie didn't break any particular ground, it was still good enough to provide one of the most iconic and instantly recognizable characters: Tinkerbell. Remember, it was Tink who provided the finale of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" by magically turning the screen to black after Porky Pig stuttered out his "That's all, folks!" catchphrase.Tink belongs to the Pantheon of iconic Disney characters and it is appropriate that in one scene she's used as a saltshaker to supply fairy dust to Wendy and her bewildered brothers, she gives the film a certain flavor and even a little sassy touch in what would have been predictable and conventional entertainment, despite the cocky personality of Peter Pan and his interesting rivalry with Captain Hook. It is a fascinating bit of irony that the sidekick of the embodiment of childhood spirit is jealous and worried about the length of her hips.The film has indeed enough innuendo to content the amateurs of psychological and sexual readings in Disney characters but if you want to judge the book by the cover, the film has all it takes to make a passable Disney film, it has that blissful energy and quick readiness for adventures that characterize children and a little touch of fairy dust that became the trademark of Disney films. And Peter Pan isn't a one-dimensional hero, he's a larger-than-life boy who's a both an immature kid and an alpha-male with a harem of mermaids and every female character having the hots for him, he also happens to be a bad-ass fighter.But it takes too long for the film to take off, the opening in the house drags for more than twenty minutes and the annoying father occupies so much screen time that any viewer would need more than a little vacation day on 'Never Land' to forget about him. At the end, there's just something that leaves you hanging on, you know you're supposed to have a little glee in the eye somewhere in the film, but all the masterful animation, the wonderfully staged fights and crocodile sequences, the animation of Pan who spends most of the time not just flying but floating and the interactions between Hook and Smee fail to connect with the story.And there are too many Lost boys so that you don't really care for them, Michael and John are only sidekicks but they don't do much in the film. It's all in Pan, Tinkerbell and Hook with Wendy as a passive and rather dull observer. It doesn't capture the essence of JM Barrie's novel but it does fill all the requirements of a Disney movie, and nothing else. When you finished it, you're just spent a nice moment but then there's nothing that really stands out, what are you going to talk about after watching the film? What did the kids learn from their adventure, that they need a mother and Wendy can't play the surrogate mother anymore because she's got to think of her own future as a mother? The ending was bittersweet with the emphasis on bitter.Maybe I'm biased because I didn't get to see the film when I was a kid, I saw many movies of the same Disney period but only excerpts from "Peter Pan". However, I grew up watching the episodes of the anime based on JM Barrie's novels and they were more faithful to his spirit, the kids were all fully developed characters and the relationship between Pan and Wendy was really captivating on a love-and-hate level, but it's like the animators tried to condense the whole story in one-night event like a dream so the whole thing seemed a bit rushed. There's not the warmth of "Lady and the Tramp", the fast-paced rhythm of "Alice in Wonderland" or the swingy catchy vibes of the "Jungle Book" time, and there's no romance, no friendship whatsoever.I guess there's something to blame on the context, by the time "Peter Pan" was released, "Cinderella" had - three years before- consolidated the financial strength of Disney studios allowing Uncle Walt to keep on expanding his business, the studio would face a few highs and lows but never with the same stakes as those in 1950. So we're in the middle of the 50's, at the peak of Disney's career, when the animation was lead by the "Nine Old Men", they were there from 1937 to 1977, if you do the math, the 50's was right in the middle, and it was still before the Xerox device, used for "101 Dalmatians", would simplify animation but with a greater focus on the story, the music, the characters, elements that seems to lack in 'Pan'."Peter Pan" is a true product of its era, a classic Walt Disney movie that has been made with confidence and dreams, and how appropriate that it tackles a story of a young boy who doesn't want to grow up. It is like the essence of Disney to make dreams possible, and in the case of "Peter Pan", there was a lot to say about this, but it never quite clicks. Maybe because it was met at a time where the master was too focused on his Disneyland project, on his work on TV and that animated features became a sort of a milk cow.I remarked a strange pattern, it's only where the future of the studios are at stakes that Disney make terrific movies, they're never as good as when they're pivotal and necessary, I can see why "Peter Pan", while a good film in its own right, isn't as good or memorable as the other features.