Word: hooke
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...HOOK Directed by Steven Spielberg...
...True Peter. The sounds of still more noisy manufacturing accompany the creation of a father-offspring conflict and the maneuvering of the Banning clan back to Gran's house. There, the children are bedded down near a familiar open window, through which they can be conveniently abducted by Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). In due course Banning will be conducted through the same window by his old friend Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts). His mission is to rescue his kids, but that gives him the chance to prove he's really a caring male (a Bly, if not entirely blithe, spirit...
...wild surmise leaps up: maybe Hook is going to be a true work of the imagination, something quick and wildly improvising, like a child's account of a made-up adventure. But the real function of this sequence is to provide a humble contrast to the excesses that follow, rendering the well-publicized gazillions that have been lavished on Hook all the more impressive...
...Temple of Doom, Empire of the Sun, just to name the top of the line), no one can doubt the director's emotional attachment to his material. It's just that he has chosen the wrong way to demonstrate it. In effect, he has spoiled his brainchild rotten. Hook is not bratty, which might at least have been fun. It's stuffy, like one of those overdressed rich kids, standing forlorn in the corner at a party, afraid of ripping his clothes...
John Williams' score, all thunder, lightning and self-importance, reinforces the film's charmlessness, and Hoffman's Hook emblematizes it. He's broody and self-absorbed, utterly gleeless in his villainy. But then even Robin Williams, that freest of comic spirits, never has a truly antic moment. Roberts, as Tinkerbell, is luckier than her co-stars. Her character has no obligation to try to fill the already overstuffed screen. Couldn't possibly do it anyway, since she's only a wee little fairy, a couple of inches tall. But Roberts is ingenuous, unaffected and what Hook is only some...