Wendy ambitiously reimagines Peter Pan — with much younger protagonists

The youthful stars are the saving grace of Benh Zeitlin's follow-up to Beasts of the Southern Wild

Wendy.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

The great tragedy of our linear existence is that you can't appreciate your youth until it's already gone. For all the stories about children supposedly not wanting to grow up, every child I've ever met yearns to be older, ignorant of tax returns and student debt and how much of a bummer it is that a day comes when you have to fold your own laundry for the rest of your life. Perhaps that explains our cultural obsession with never getting old: The Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth, Dr. Garth Fisher. Even the story of Peter Pan, after all, was concocted by a grown up.

The dream of eternal youth is also the subject of director Benh Zeitlin's Wendy, out Friday, which uses J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan as its foundation. Unlike many of the other live-action adaptations of that tale, though, Zeitlin chose to cast children quite a few years younger than the young teens suggested by Barrie's 1904 text. It's an ambitious decision, not the least because working with actors whose ages are largely in the single-digits is unpredictable. The small stars, though, are Wendy's saving grace, even when its larger philosophizing about aging fails to land.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.