Cipher-J

Compared to the Disney cartoon, or any other previous attempt to represent this story theatrically, this version stands as a hallmark of perfection. Some of the special effects are a bit excessive, perhaps, but it remains an outstanding production. The "Peter Pan" motif is archetypal, in Jungian terms, because it speaks to that paradox of human development concerned with change. Clinging to childhood fantasies is a natural part of life. We see it in adults who try to preserve their youth by snapping their fingers to the music, or by continuing to play the same games they favored as children. Peter Pan, however, is a rather tragic character, who by never growing up, ends up alone, and with nothing to look forward to but a world of pretend.

Contrary to what some may think, Peter Pan is not about everyone's secret dreams. As an archetype, Peter Pan represents the symbol of remaining the same. In contrast, the lessons of childhood are about creativity and growth. The objection to adulthood is that adulthood doesn't change. Therefore, and ironically, Peter Pan represents the opposite of youth: not changing, not growing, not doing anything new. He has an old person's mind in the body of a boy. He is stuck in a rut and unwilling to change. Wendy, on the other hand, represents the true child. She wants the feeling and love that an old man's brain in a young boy's body cannot give. It isn't that he doesn't want to grow up, therefore, but that his unwillingness to grow has already made him too old.

Independent films have a reputation for being different than the mainstream fare, but different is not always better. This is a story about a profoundly ordinary girl who finds herself faced with a non-ordinary situation. Otherwise, the banality of her thinking can be found at the checkout line of any K-Mart. The story merely demonstrates that unusual circumstances do not necessarily cause ordinary persons to rise above their commonplace values.

In terms of its being a low budget presentation, the most obvious deficit is in the sound mixing. It is almost impossible to hear what the characters are saying, most of the time. This is not a slur on their fine British accents, but on the technicians who did the mixing. The background noise is typically louder than the voice track. The story itself is hardly worth watching, but having to strain to hear what they're saying makes it all the more tedious to endure.

While we know how this story will end up right from the start, it tells us what we already suspected. Movie stars live lives that cinema viewers can hardly imagine. We see them on the screen and think that they "are" the characters they play, even though they are just following scripts written by others. The typical movie star is just a puppet, holding to no original views worth knowing about. If someone writes a script for them in which they deliver lines more profound than they could have imagined on their own, we give the credit to them, and not to the writer of the script.

On one level we know that, but on another level we keep hoping that they are more than just hired pretenders. In this film, a home town girl wins a contest to date a movie star. She wants so much to believe that he is more than a talking dummy that she believes his lines, even when he swipes them from the boy next door. She gets so caught up in her fantasies about the movie star, and what her life would be like in that glittering world of make-believe, that she almost loses sight of what is going on in her real world. There are no surprises to this story, but it is well done, and fun to watch at least once.