The movie that I watched during the afternoon of 2 October 2022 promised so much, but, sadly, it failed to deliver for me.
Directed by Brenda Chapman (in her live-action directorial debut), and released in 2020 by Signature Entertainment (in the UK) and Relativity Media (in the USA), it was the fantasy(?) movie Come Away. In it, the classic children's stories of Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie and Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll were not only reimagined but melded together.
This was achieved via the nothing if not original construct of having Peter and Alice as siblings (together with a slightly older brother, David, whose tragic demise sets the scene for much darkness and introspection), plus kindly if impoverished parents Jack and Rose Littleton, played by David Oyelowo (excellent) and Angelina Jolie (stick to Maleficent!).
Also on hand are a well-meaning yet ruthless aunt (Anna Chancellor), a deranged grandfather in hyperactive Mad Hatter mode (Clarke Peters), and not forgetting a couple of so brief as to be scarcely noticeable and entirely forgettable cameo performances by Michael Caine and Derek Jacobi. The children are all very imaginative, especially Peter (Jordan Anthony) whose derring-do alter ego pretend-character is of course a Peter Pan precursor, whereas Alice (Keira Chansa) reveals a particular liking for pretend tea parties with her white rabbit toy and others as attendees.
Their play fantasies are visualised beautifully on-screen, but that is all that they appear to be, fantasies, with a very real, grim mainstream plot taking centre-stage (one in which David's death leads to their father falling back into his earlier gambling ways and their mother resorting to alcohol to ease her pain) – until the final climactic scene, that is.
Then, out of nowhere, after tracking down their evil moneylender uncle Captain James aka CJ (David Gyasi) in his underground 19th-Century London lair after he'd had their father Jack maimed for failing to repay a gambling debt, Peter and a befriended gang of London street urchins called the Lost Boys, together with Captain James and his villainous henchmen, all abruptly transform – into Peter Pan and the Lost Boys battling Captain Hook and his pirate band aboard a galleon far far away!
As in the original Barrie novel, Peter wins, chopping off Captain James's/Hook's hand and throwing it to the very much alive crocodile who only moments earlier had been a very dead taxiderm specimen mounted on the wall of Captain James's subterranean London abode. Then off Peter and the Lost Boys fly through the sky on their galleon headed for Never Land!
Moreover, the movie ends with a secret visit to his former family home by Peter, leaving behind a pile of gold coins for his parents before disappearing back to Never Land without giving them the chance to see him.
In short, what had hitherto been a straightforward non-fiction plot, with fantasy scenes limited to expressions of the children's imagination, abruptly and inexplicably transforms into a wholesale fantasy – a transformation that makes no sense whatsoever. How can Peter's disappearance be explained in real terms, especially as his family seems entirely unconcerned by it? And if their wicked uncle, who'd maimed his own brother over a mere gambling debt, had really had his own hand chopped off by young Peter, I dread to think how violent his revenge on the family would have been. Yet, nothing, they all apparently lived happily ever after.
It's almost as if the ending from an entirely different, fantasy-based Peter Pan-themed film had accidentally been tagged onto this film, instead of its own expected non-fiction one. Bizarre.
Indeed, by making no sense whatsoever, this fatuous albeit visually spectacular finale spoilt the entire movie for me, albeit one that until then had at times proven rather too effective at tugging upon my emotions by reviving so many memories of my own long-gone happy childhood and loving family.
As for this movie's title, Come Away, it is taken from a famous poem by Irish writer W.B. Yeats, entitled 'Stolen Child' (click here for a suitably spellbinding musical setting of his words by Loreena McKennitt), which is all about a human child induced by fairies to come away with them to their enchanted land, leaving behind the human world forever. At the film's beginning and ending, an adult Alice (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is reading this poem to her children (who just so happen to be called Wendy, John, and Michael – the three children befriended by the title character in the original novel Peter Pan), but it has precious direct relevance to the movie's plot. True, Peter does ultimately abandon the real world and even his family for the enchanted realm of Never Land, but he does so entirely of his own free will, he is not lured away by supernatural entities, or anyone else for that matter.
All in all, Come Away is a decidedly unconnected, unconvincing, and ultimately unsatisfying movie as far as I'm concerned – except for the exquisitely-portrayed fantasy scenes, which are truly a beautiful sight to behold, however relevant or otherwise they each may be to the overall storyline.
If you'd like to catch a glimpse of what to expect, click here to watch an official Come Away trailer on YouTube.
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