Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 5 March

Hook (Spielberg, 1991)

Firstly, an apo­logy. The editor-in-chief has poin­ted out to me that the link to FoxNews I pos­ted in yesterday’s news­let­ter takes you to tides of tox­ic sludge and a pal­ate cleanser is required. Here is a pic­ture of our cat, Arthur.

I’ve men­tioned before here that, in an attempt to wrangle some struc­ture around my chaot­ic view­ing habits, I have a few pro­jects on the go.

Firstly, there is the count­down of the Sight & Sound Fifty Greatest Films list (cur­rently at #31). Then, watch­ing an epis­ode a week of Mad Men and read­ing the equi­val­ent epis­ode recap in Matt Zoller Seitz’s book Mad Men Carousel. Also on Sunday even­ings I’m now watch­ing a single epis­ode of that fam­ous fairytale The West Wing (and read­ing a chapter of Mellisa Fitzgerald and Mary McCarthy’s book What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to the West Wing) and an epis­ode each week of the fam­ous his­tor­ic­al doc­u­ment­ary series The World at War (avail­able as a remastered Blu-ray in a box set from ViaVision).

When I remem­ber, I’m also work­ing my way through the com­plete Steven Spielberg (thanks to a couple of box sets and reas­on­ably thor­ough avail­ab­il­ity on digit­al). Last night I rewatched Hook for the first time since it came out in 1991, a film that I didn’t remem­ber all that fondly and that was prob­ably caus­ing a bit of a block­age, if I’m honest.

Robin Williams plays Peter Banning, uncon­vin­cing as a work­ahol­ic dad – the film seems con­fused about wheth­er he is a law­yer or an account­ant, per­haps both.

Banning is an orphan, raised by “Granny” Wendy (Maggie Smith aged up!) who ded­ic­ated her life to find­ing homes for the “lost” chil­dren of London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital (not actu­ally an orphanage).

Wendy is the ori­gin­al Wendy of J.M. Barrie’s fam­ous story, Peter Pan or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up. Despite a fear of fly­ing, Peter and his fam­ily travel to London to present Wendy with an award but while there the fiendish Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman) kid­naps his chil­dren, hop­ing to tempt Peter Pan (for it is he) back to Neverland for one final battle.

Thanks to fairy Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts), Peter remem­bers who he is/was, the Lost Boys have their lead­er again and Peter’s chil­dren see their fath­er as a hero rather than just anoth­er of Spielberg’s dead­beat dads.

Thanks to Spielberg’s typ­ic­ally exuber­ant dir­ec­tion, the film just about escapes the strait­jack­et of its story con­ceit but it does seem to owe an awful lot to oth­er films, rather than being truly ori­gin­al: the gang­ster splurge of Parker’s Bugsy Malone for example, or Hoffman chan­nel­ling the great Terry-Thomas rather than dis­cov­er­ing a char­ac­ter of his own.

Attempts to shoe­horn in cur­rent fads like skate­board­ing (Stacy Peralta is a con­sult­ant), “port­able” phones and cameos from fad­ing rock stars Jimmy Buffett, David Crosby and Phil Collins, seem a bit des­per­ate, but the heart of the story and Spielberg’s skills are too good for it to sink.

In my notes I say, “this des­per­ately wants to be a music­al” and it turns out that was the ori­gin­al plan but Spielberg and maes­tro John Williams lost their nerve at the last minute.

Minor Spielberg but still enjoyable.

Incidentally, did you know that the only excep­tion to the usu­al copy­right expiry peri­ods applies to Peter Pan? Barrie donated the copy­right to the Great Ormond Street Hospital and an act of par­lia­ment had to be passed con­firm­ing that it lasts in per­petu­ity. Even Disney can’t take con­trol of it – it’s still all for the sick kids at GOSH.

Where to watch Hook

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from Apple (in 4K UHD, DolbyVision and Dolby Atmos no less)

Australia: Streaming on Binge, FoxtelNow and Stan

Canada: Streaming on CTV (free with ads), AMC+ or Starz

Ireland & UK: Streaming on Prime Video or Sky

India: Streaming on Sony LIV

USA: Digital rental