#2: Hook
Hello friends and welcome back to more film fun. THIS IS MY CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE HIT NEW SUMMER FILM starring our mutual friend/lover/source of eternal inspiration, Robin Williams. ‘Hook’ (1991).
Julia Roberts is in it too, along with Bob Hoskins, Dustin Hoffman, and that annoying fuckin’ white kid that I can relate to on a level that makes me extremely uncomfortable.
LET’S GET EFFIN’ STARTED.
The movie opens with Robin Williams being a super fancy businessman who is in a rush to get to his son’s Soccer/Football/Baseball/Magic the Gathering game. Robin (or in movie land, Peter Banning) screwed the pooch (not literally) and is super late! Oh dear! So late that everybody has gone home! And now everybody is mad at him… especially his son! Family drama!
Peter and his family catch a Pan Am plane to the United Kingdom to see Maggie Smith and some real genuine proper civilised culture. Jack, the aforementioned annoying white kid, is being a total annoying white kid (I foreshadowed that you’re welcome). He’s all throwing a baseball around on the aeroplane and making the oxygen things come down, which makes Peter poop a bit cos he’s totes scared of flying (THIS BECOMES AN IRONIC AND HUMOROUS FACT LATER IN THE MOVIE BUT I DON’T WANNA SPOIL IT). Jack has also drawn a picture where the plane crashes and everybody is safe except for his Dad, who dies. Instead of suggesting to his son that perhaps he ought to seek mental health support or at the very least discuss these issues with a trained professional, Peter gets VERY ANGRY (and poops a little more), essentially doing nothing to help the situation.
They arrive in ENGLAND and it’s SNOWING and Jack nearly breaks his neck and chokes on his gum at the same time, which would be a SHAME (sarcasm n. the use of irony to mock or convey contempt). They go in the fancy-ass (or fancy-arse, this is England after all) where Maggie Smith lives. Maggie told her I can call her Mag Smizzy, but only cos we’re good friends. If I hear you use that name I’m calling Charlie Dancer and Mickey Gambon and we’re gonna effin’ toast you mate. For reals.
Mag Smizzy looks super old. Like the same age she does today, I’m not joking. I’m pretty sure she was born like Benjamin Button but never did the getting younger bit. I wish I was her. Maybe with my own hips.
ANYWAYS Peter and his wife who is surprisingly not Emma Thompson go out for a FANCY DINNER and Hook shows up at the house while they’re gone and kidnaps the children! This is more quality FORESHADOWING. Can you guess what the director is foreshadowing here? That’s right! He’s trying to lay down hints that Hook is a TOTAL FUCKING DICK. This is a recurring theme in the film.
The parents come home and the nanny is all crying and they find a note written by Hook that’s been pinned to the wall by a freaking dagger. Health and Safety literature suggests that a flat-backed thumb tack would have been the more appropriate way to affix paper to a wall, especially in the physical context of a nursery, but he a pirate so he ain’t give a SINGLE SHIT. Everybody is crying cos they lost loved ones I guess.
In the middle of the night, TINKERBELL shows up and is all like ‘hey peter you’re old now lol wanna bang? ;D’ and Peter has to battle with the fact that it’s Julia Roberts (super hot) and the fact that she’s four inches tall, which makes the whole thing a logistical nightmare. And, unlike many of us, Peter doesn’t find problem solving regarding the theoretical manipulation of scalar physical dimensions to be particularly arousing. It’s his loss really.
TINKERBUTT (that’s the sound of me scraping the bottom of the barrel) drags Peter’s ass (and the rest of him) to Neverland (not the Michael Jackson one) and dumps him in the pirate ship. It’s literally the WORST POSSIBLE PLACE TO DUMP SOMEBODY. She’s definitely not a THINKERBELL, right?
Whatever.
Tink tells Peter to pretend to have a stroke so he fits in with the pirates. It’s really insensitive but also works so I’m conflicted on the ethics of the advice. He finds his kids, has a chance to rescue them but is a total pussy about it and ends up falling in the ocean and making out with mermaids. Could’ve gone worse.
He gets found by the Lost Boys and their boss RUFIO. The first thing he says is literally ‘I’m a total douche who wants a punch in the face but over the course of the film it will become clear that I’ve changed enough to let go of my ego and work for the greater good’. That should’ve been cut to be honest.
Anyways they all mess around for a while and then Tink is like ‘Peter I wanna show you something ;D’ and Peter is all like ‘Tink HOW WOULD IT WORK’ and Tink grows to the size of a full grown lady! And Peter is all like ‘okay then guess I didn’t need to spent three weeks doing all these fucking calculations’ and they make out for a bit and somehow… the sexual nature of that act reminds Peter… how to be… Peter… Pan… again?
?????
He also crows like a rooster. Poultry gene splicing was big with the Lost Boys in the 40s.
By this point, Jack (the dumbass son) is BEST FRIENDS FOREVER with Captain Hook, and the daughter is sulking. Oh yeah, Peter has a daughter, but she contributes nothing to the story because she’s a girl and this is 1991, so yeah. She sings a dumb song I think and at some point tells Hook that he’s a bad man cos his mommy never loved him? She’s fucking brutal.
With Jack under Hook’s thumb, it seems like the day is LOST, BOYS! (don’t patronise me with your laughter.)
But it’s not lost! Rufio goes ‘this is the point I stop being a douche remember how I said it was gonna happen?’ and Peter takes back the Sword of the Leader of the Lost Boys and ritually executes Rufio. I’m joking, Hook does that later after some quality 90s banter. Spoilers, sorry.
Peter leads and attack on the pirates, and there’s lots of swinging from ropes with swords between teeth and nobody gets a cut lip, which frankly makes me doubt the integrity of the film. There’s a BIG FIGHT and the Lost Boys are WINNING and then Rufio gets STABBED in the tumtum by Hook and Peter and Hook start to DUEL with swords and wits.
Hook’s wit seems to consist entirely of ‘lol u wear tights peter what are you a GIRL’ and to which Peter responds ‘it’s Britney bitch’ and makes a giant alligator clock fall on Hook in what is an ironic and thematically powerful death. The alligator burps loudly.
THERE’S A SCENE I FORGOT TO MENTION SHIT. There’s this little African-Neverlandish kid who is cute and sweet, and when Peter remembers that he’s Peter Pan, the kids all crowd around him and squish his face to get rid of the wrinkles so they can see the boy within. And the little kid goes ‘There you are Peter’ and my heart melted. I spent four years in the hospital while they tried to get it un-melted but it was worth it. This film will destroy you in the best possible way.
There’s also this overweight African-Neverlandish kid who is cool and strong and tough and kind, and Peter crowns him as the new Pan before he leaves with annoying-son and seven-lines-of-dialogue-sarah. It’s actually a really awkward scene because Peter’s kids and the Lost Boys don’t actually interact at all, they just look at each other shyly like two people at a party who want to hang out but nobody introduced them and it’s like 1am and way too late to go up and be like ‘hey my name’s shitface whiny white boy what’s yours?’ so you just gaze at each other across the sea of passed-out drunks and people singing bad karaoke until it’s time to go home alone and wonder what could have been. But when you wonder, wonder broadly. Who knows, maybe they were a very stabby person? You don’t know. And now you never will. Pussy.
I RATE THIS MOVIE 9/10. It loses a whole point for the awfully, awfully edited voice clip that gets jammed in when they’re leaving Neverland. It’s Robin Williams whispering something like ‘I’ll never forget youuuuuuu’ but it makes me want to BARF BIG TIME because it’s CORNY LIKE A TORTILLA and on my current diet I’m NOT ALLOWED CORN.
I never said I was gonna be objective okay so shut your face.
