PhantomKnight Goes Spielbergian

The music. The cinematography. The editing. All stellar. It's not SnoBorderZero's cup of tea, but I love it.

It's fine I guess. Doesn't really stand out for me, especially in Williams's body of work.

Hook

It's funny to think that 2021 is the 30th anniversary of Hook, almost a third of a century of Bangarang.  Not to say that movie fans the world over will be celebrating, it's a rather divisive film to say the least, something I only discovered over the last few years.  I remember watching Hook in theaters when I was six years old in the fall of 1991.  That's an important detail to remember when talking about Hook because there are many beloved movies that others write off because 'you have to see them when you're young to appreciate them.'  That never really made a whole ton of sense to me.  It's certainly true that you look at movies, and anything really, through a different lens as you age. That goes both ways, you can be like me who rewatched Vertigo in my thirties after disliking it in my teens, now it's one of my favorite films.  On the flip side you can look at a movie like Goonies and the movie really shows its age (sorry for any Goonies fans).  Then there are the movies that people put on the mantle of nostalgia and are often accused of letting that nostalgia greatly influence their opinions despite the fact that those people might legitimately enjoy the movie.  I know I've had that thrown at me because of my love for Tim Burton's Batman.  But like Batman, Hook is much more to me than a nostalgic walk down memory lane.  I enjoyed Hook as a child and whenever I happen to revisit it I enjoy it still.  In fact I've tried to comprehend some of the criticisms that people have leveled over the years and while some might seem legitimate I just think that others are misguided.  I sit in Phantom's camp that I could still sit, watch and enjoy Hook while checking my nostalgia at the door because there's so much of it that works and works well.

When I started to type this, yet another reexamining of Hook, something very obvious occurred to me; I'm not going to change anyone's minds.  Hook is an almost 30 year old movie and most of the people who view it as a movie worth arguing about are pretty locked in with their opinions.  What else is there to say about it at this point?  That's fine though, nobody has to have the same opinions about anything.  That doesn't mean that I don't think that Hook gets an unfair shake these days.  Like I said, I was a bit flabbergasted to see that Hook was pretty widely panned upon release.  This is Hook we're talking about, one of the staples of kids growing up in the 90s.  What's there not to like?  Literally every one of my friends, even the non-movie fans, can quote at least a few scenes from it.  I can sit here and cite the obvious; being a bona fide sequel to Peter Pan, successfully reincorporating the absent father theme commonly found in Steven Spielberg movies, spot on casting (nobody mentions Bob Hoskins as Smee who steals every scene he's in), fun and quotable dialogue and a John Williams score that stands alongside the best ones he's composed.  It's the criticisms though that I just don't agree with.  Even in 1991 I blew off criticism of the 2 1/2 hour runtime.  I was 6 years old when I saw it and loved every damn minute of it, if a 6 year old can do it I think professional film critics can, too.  Recently I started to dissect some of the criticism and I never felt much of it held up regardless of who fired it out.  Even Steven Spielberg, the guy behind the camera, has problems with his opus.  I remember reading how he said 'Hook was the one script I directed that I felt I never cracked.'  I disagree.  I don't think the script was a bad script at all regardless of the runtime.  It had a good setup, the ending was great and frankly there aren't a whole lot of things I would cut.  Maybe the Boo Box scene, that scared the hell out of me as a kid and I don't think I'd miss it if they took it out of the imminent Criterion release.  I've said before in other reviews that I've tried to become more conscious of differentiating between my personal preferences with legitimate gripes when breaking down a movie and I think preferences bleeds into a lot of the conversation about Hook.  I think it's disappointing though because it's ultimately a funny, touching and entertaining fantasy film that more recent Peter Pan adaptations can't even touch.

I actually rewrote this a couple of times because I'm not sure what else I personally can contribute to the praise or defense of Hook.  I will say though that there's a reason why I think people have introduced and reintroduced Hook to their children over the years which is a testament unto itself. Like many, many others Hook holds a special place in my heart and while I don't expect to convince anyone to take another stab at it I would hope that even the critics one day might give it a fair shake.  As of this writing it currently has a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Get the hell out of here with that nonsense.  In no way, not in any sense should Hook be considered one of Spielberg's worst films and that's because it succeeds much more than it fails.  There's so much to take away from it, so much that helps it stand apart from other family-directed fantasy films and I think those are reasons why we're still talking about and enjoying Hook, Peter Banning, Rufio, Thud Ball, food fights and Toodles almost 30 years later. 

Long live the Hook!

Going through this page I'm reminded that I was dragged for my clearly correct opinion on the Hook score.


Anyway, based on our Richard Donner chat in the Auteurnament, I will at least concede that in the realm of "Gen-X kid movies that only hold up if you watched them as kids", Hook is better than The Goonies.

Don't dodge the nice thing I said!

Just trying to help you see the light.

That’s just the second dose of the vaccine talking.

Certainly better than The Sorcerer's Stone.