The victim of a near-total critical mauling when it was first released, Steven Spielbergs live action sequel to the classic Peter Pan story is proof positive that kids just dont read movie reviews. If you grew up in the late seventies or the eighties - or even the early nineties - the chances are that Hook played a huge part in your childhood. Children didnt care that forty-year-old Robin Williams was too old and too tubby to play the Boy That Never Grew Up, even if he was perfect as the middle-aged middle-management lawyer that Peter grew up into. No, children resonated with the garish, stylised, overstuffed production design, the lively action and the message that youth was a state of mind. They loved the skateboarding, Road Warrior Babies that stood in for the Lost Boys, and they especially loved it when Williams rediscovers his inner child by reconnecting with his actual children and learns how to fly and fight with a sword again. There was Dustin Hoffmans Captain Hook, impossibly flamboyant and camp as Christmas and Julia Roberts playing Tinkerbell as a toothy pixie-cut in tights. There was Thud Butt, rolling into a ball to knock pirates over like skittles, and there was everyones favourite flame-haired punk gangleader, Rufio, played with hyper-aggressive proto-masculine peacockery by former breakdancer Dante Basco. Kids would shout BANGARANG! in the playground, chant RUFIO RUFIO RUFIO at one another and this behaviour would continue (with a slightly more ironic twist) into their teenage years. Hook was the gift that kept on giving. Even today, if you loved Hook as a kid you can watch it now - despite its many, many flaws - and experience an irrational swell of nostalgia and delight.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
