Hook

Spielberg's Hook looks like a theme park. The PeterPan plot has been rejigged to suit Hollywood's dreary preoccupation with redemption; not that it matters much, since the story is largely becalmed so that we can wallow in the production values. The sets are variable but often unpleasant on the eye. To say that the best thing about the film is the miniaturised Roberts as Tinkerbell, wearing motorised Arthur Rackham wings, gives some idea how duff it is. The $60 million-plus enterprise first nosedives in the sprawling sequence where the Lost Boys train the paunchy grown-up Peter Pan (Williams) for combat against arch-enemy Hook (Hoffman), who has kidnapped his children. Hoffman's Old Etonian accent slips a bit; Hoskins as Hook's sidekick has nothing to do, and does it raucously. By the end, Peter has ditched his Wall Street cell phone and rediscovered the child in himself, so that's all right.