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Pan | 2015 | PG | - 2.4.3
Living in an orphanage, the boy who would become Peter Pan (Levi Miller) is sold and whisked away to the magic Neverland during the 1940s London Blitz. He finds adventure and danger as he meets the future Captain Hook (Garrett Hedlund) and fights the pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman) with Princess Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara). Also with Lewis MacDougal, Adeel Akhtar and Amanda Seyfried. Directed by Joe Wright. [1:51]
SEX/NUDITY 2 - Under the sea three mermaids are topless with their long hair covering their chest, breasts and backs except for one bare shoulder each. Dozens of indigenous island men are shown shirtless with designs painted on their faces and bare chest and they wear skirts of woven material to below the knees; some indigenous women wear wide tube tops that reveal midriffs. A man wears a large loincloth, baring his chest, abdomen and back. Several pirates appear shirtless or with open shirts and some pirates display large bellies and navels while others display bare chest and back. A small wooden representation of a woman displays moderate cleavage in a V-necked dress; in a close-up, she and a wooden man caress each other's faces briefly.
► A man says to a princess, "Your Highness, I was hoping to get you alone," and she smiles slightly. A man asks a woman if she likes sunrises and she asks him what he is trying to do; he replies that he is trying to flirt and she says that the men of her village are honest and do not flirt. A man tells a young boy that a legend says a boy was born of love between a fairy prince and a human girl.
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VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - Two scenes show a much larger adult kick a young boy in the stomach hard enough to throw him off-screen: The first scene adult is a nun, who kicks the boy through a door and into a wall as he shouts; the second scene adult is a male pirate who stomps on a plank to make a boy fall into a ravine, and then kicks a boy off another ship's plank, but the boy floats in a deep canyon after falling and shouting for several seconds. A pirate kicks a woman in the stomach hard, sending her across the screen as she gasps in pain. A man strikes a young boy in the stomach with an elbow, causing him to yelp in pain. When two young boys complain about the thin gray oatmeal that is their only nutrition, a Mother Superior takes them to her office, pulls out a thin and wide metal strap and beats it loudly on the desk in close-up; the camera cuts to the two boys in their dorm with their hands heavily bandaged where she beat them, but no blood appears.
► A number of pirates descend through an orphanage's roof on ropes into a crowded dorm and grab boys by one ankle, carrying them up to a flying galleon as a few boys shout in fear; one boy jumps off the galleon and lands safely on the orphanage roof while another boy hangs from a fishing net but a pirate pulls him aboard. Pirates force thousands of orphans to mine crystal ore for Blackbeard the Pirate, who hovers above the mines on a flying ship; the boys (ages about 8 to their early 20s) are covered with mud and grime, use pickaxes to cut into rock walls all day and are not allowed to bathe (one young boy unwraps a bandaged hand to show a little blood, small raw wounds and welts on the palm); prates shackle the youth into prison cells at night and we never see them eat. A pirate captain captures a native princess and a boy and puts them on his ship with their hands tied to a mast as they stand on deck; the captain cuts the ties and the boy escapes the ship, gathers a flock of giant vultures and leads them to the ship as he rides the largest bird and they attack as pirates shoot flamethrowers and cannons and the captain shouts, "Kill them all!"; a man with another ship saves the boy and princess with a swinging rope. Two men fight using a martial arts routine on trampolines; one man is struck by a series of punches and kicks and he falls several times, slams into a wall, and falls onto a trampoline, bouncing into the air (one man has a few scrapes across his cheek).
► A pirate captain confronts a princess, a man and a boy and cuts a pendant from the boy's necklace, and then uses it as a key to open a world filled with glowing crystals and sighs, "I'm going to live forever"; his ship slides to the edge of a long crystal spar and stops and a pirate falls over the side as he wails and the captain shouts, "Kill the boy!" whereupon an extended fight begins and the princess fights several men with punches and kicks and by using an ax that returns like a boomerang (it rounds a mast and hits a pirate in the back kidney area, and he falls forward off-screen with no visible blood); then the princess climbs along ropes, lowered masts, and a narrow railing to escape pirates.
► Two aerial shots of fight scenes feature hand-to-hand combat among native people, pirates and a princess, using punches, kicks, throws, swords and spears; we see a little blood at the corner of a man's mouth and on the top of a man's smooth head (a circular indentation there looks like it might be a scar).
► Fairies attack pirates in swarms, hold them against walls and slam them against mast poles; an a close-up, a princess kicks a pirate's sword in half and it stabs into the deck flooring as the pirate slams the princess to the deck, picks her up and holds a broken sword blade to her throat; the ship crashes hard into a wall of crystal and begins to disintegrate when a boy flies and carries a man and then a woman to safety on another crystal spar; a large swarm of fairies slams the pirate against the railing of a deck and he cannot escape, but is alive (we do not see him again).
► A pirate leader slashes his sword near a captive boy's face, shouts madly, then smiles and offers the boy chocolate; the pirate slashes at him again and asks the boy if he is there to kill him to fulfill a prophecy and the boy says he does not believe in the prophecy (the pirate releases the boy). At a native village men and a few women point spears at a young boy as their king announces that the boy is the Chosen One and the people lower their spears (the whole village kneels); a man tells the boy that the natives feel he is their messiah and savior, so they will help the boy fight a pirate leader. When new slave children arrive at mines, pirates force the current inmates to sing and chant loudly in welcome.
► A nun throws a bucket of cold water over a boy and his chalk drawing on the ground while sneering at him. An orphan finds a note left with him as an abandoned infant; looking at it, the letters rearrange themselves as if he is seeing words as a dyslexic would see and later, the head nun at his orphanage rips up the note, telling him he is not special causing him to scream.
► An overweight nun with gray teeth and blotchy skin, waddles and growls like a bear at orphan boys in her charge; when she is angry, she roars and shouts, carrying an ax handle that she beats against doors. A pirate leader becomes more unstable with time, alternately shouting and screaming, and then smiling.
► A floating boy revisits his old orphanage and arranges for each boy in the dorm to hold onto a rope extending through the ceiling as a nun, snoring in bed, awakens and waddles through a hallway with an ax handle in her hand, shouting; she breaks the dorm door in and falls on it just in time to see all the boys rise through the ceiling and escape and she lies on her stomach on the broken door, growling like an animal.
► During the London Blitz, Nazi bombers fly toward the audience, shooting bullets that seem to go by the heads of viewers while loud air raid sirens sound and orphan boys put on gas masks and hide in a basement; two bombers in the air burst into flames and fill the screen with flashes and smoke while two other planes run out of gas and fall off-screen; a locomotive seems to rush toward the audience and a flying pirate ship seems to fly among viewers when another plane's engine catches fire and the pilot ejects safely as the plane falls away. Several German planes chase a flying galleon and fire large bullets into its wooden sides, but it lifts safely into the stratosphere, where a boy on board floats at the end of a rope around one ankle while a chicken floats beside him and lays an egg that falls toward the camera; the boy falls as the ship descends to another world (he hits the deck on his stomach, but is unharmed).
► Under the sea, black clouds transform into people who argue and a man accidentally kills a woman with his sword (no blood) and shouts a long "No!" Giant birds that look like stone and feathers attack people on the ground, squawking loudly until a female native rams a spear through the most aggressive bird's beak, ending the onslaught; she punches one of the men unconscious when he speaks loudly and slowly to her and the camera cuts to a native tree house village where men and women dance and sing while the unconscious man is seen hanging by his feet in the middle of the village. A man, a woman and a boy float down a river in a large basket-boat at night by torchlight when a giant crocodile breaks the surface, flies over the people, scatters the torches and pulls the boy overboard by the seat of his pants (three mermaids save the boy and push him to the surface).
► Two men and a boy escape a mining camp and ride a small cable car to a balloon-type spaceport to steal a docked galleon but pirates lock up the cable; the boy uses a sword to unhook and free the cable car, which falls into a ship's sail, sending the men and boy sliding down the sail to the deck (the boy slams onto his stomach, but is unharmed) where they steal a ship and are chased by another flying ship; the first ship slides over a stone wall as the wooden projection on the second ship punctures the wall, stranding the ship there.
► A miner uses a metal hook to dig through a prison cell wall to warn a young boy of a blasting cap before a loud explosion fills the screen with flames and pushes the boy out toward the audience, stopped by iron bars. We hear two bombs explode off-screen and see a marbled glass door panel light up in reflection of the blast. A flying galleon crashes into a large jungle tree as two men and a boy on the ground watch half of the ship fall and disintegrate, not hitting them. A large tree stump gives rise to animate wood sculptures of people, animals and monsters in a story sequence.
► A swarm of star-like fairies forms a hologram of a woman that speaks to a human boy who cries. In an orphanage during the late-night Nazi Blitz, a nun has an assistant raise a black flag with skull and cross bones above the building. In the night sky, a crocodile made of stars chases a young boy made of stars. Flying fish fill the screen in a night scene and blue lights flash in their bodies. Thousands of fairies swarm with blue and white lights flashing in their small bodies as they fly in several scenes.
► Two orphan boys break into a storeroom, telling each other their head nun is a greedy hoarder. A pirate reads a note written on a large pig's ear, but the ear looks like thick paper. We hear that a nun hoards all the rations and sells the children at an orphanage. A pirate tells his captain that savages killed 40 pirates. A pirate captain tells a young boy that he will kill the boy just as he killed the boy's mother. A man tells a woman that a pirate captain will kill her.
► Several pirates have two to three silver or gold teeth where natural teeth were lost and one pirate has painted his face and hairless head chalk-white with deep black circles around his eyes and mouth. Several pirates have extremely dirty, crooked, yellow teeth. Sleeping head-to-toe, a man's dirty toes rub against another sleeping man's nose. A man appears with his back to the camera and we see him from the waist up in front of a tree as he wiggles as if removing his trousers, but pulls them back up when another person appears (bathroom functions suggested).
► A bent old man with translucent, bumpy skin and a slight shudder sits in his room where he takes three small crystal rocks we see in close-up in a dish, places them into a covered burner and takes a large wire-mesh anesthetic mask with a hose, attaches the hose to the burner, covers his face with the mask and inhales deeply; he removes the mask to reveal a much younger face and no trace of a shudder.
► Two boys stand in water in a storeroom and one falls through a trap door; in the flooding sub-basement, they find shelves filled with canned and jarred goods and a box of gold coins, eat jam with their hands, and drop a jam jar on the floor.
LANGUAGE 3 - 1 obscene hand gesture by a 10-or 12-year-old boy, 1 mild scatological term, 2 mild obscenities, name-calling (bogus, ugly, daft, stupid, imbeciles, insane, savages, pipsqueak, coward, nasty little creature, Original Nightmare).
SUBSTANCE USE - An elderly man takes three small crystal rocks and places them into a covered burner that he attaches to a mask by a hose and inhales deeply through the mask (he removes the mask to reveal a much younger face.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Fantasy, magic, legends, greed, child labor trafficking, corrupt orphanages, war, illicit drug use, mental illness, restoring youth, courage, sacrifice, hope, having a mission, learning one's ancestry.
MESSAGE - Everyone has their own story and destiny to pursue, no matter where they are now.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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