Review: 'Wendy' puts a new spin on 'Peter Pan,' showing kids in the make-it-yourself world of childhood imagination

It’s entirely possible that filmmaker Benh Zeitlin has my number, and I will fall madly in love with whatever movie he tosses up on the screen — just as I did with his 2012 debut “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

On the other hand, lightning only strikes in the same place twice — which may be why Zeitlin’s sophomore effort, “Wendy,” feels like a case of diminishing returns. But when one starts at dizzying heights of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a step down is still in the stratosphere.

Director Zeitlin, who cowrote the script with his sister, Eliza, takes on the story of “Peter Pan,” from the viewpoint of the girl who finds herself among the boys who won’t grow up. This Wendy (played by first-timer Devin France) is a 9-year-old who has grown up in an apartment above the Southern diner where her mom (Shay Walker) has worked since Wendy was a baby and her twin older brothers (Gage and Gavin Naquin) were little kids.

One night, as the train roars past the window, Wendy hears the siren call of a boy laughing. She, along with the twins, hop on the train and are transported to a far-away place. It’s a volcanic island (actually, this part of the movie was filmed in Antigua) populated by children — the most prominent one a mischievous Peter (Yashua Mack). These are the lost boys, Wendy explains in voice-over, but there are those who are really lost: The pirates, grizzled adults on a nearby ship. (The way they find their Capt. Hook is clever and beautiful.)

In this imagining, Wendy is freed from the chore of being the Lost Boys’ substitute mother. That role — mashed up, sort of, with Tinkerbell — is a glowing underwater creature referred to as “Mother,” who seems to be the key to Peter’s survival and eternal youth on this island.

There are a lot of ideas brimming about “Wendy,” so many that Zeitlin sometimes has difficulty lassoing them into a coherent narrative. But Zeitlin’s gift for compiling the flotsam and jetsam and letting children build something from it — the quality that made “Beasts of the Southern Wild’s” main character Hushpuppy so captivating — is still an awesome force, one that propels “Wendy” to Neverland and beyond.

——

‘Wendy’

★★★1/2

Opened February 28 in select cities; opens Friday, March 13, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for brief violent/bloody images. Running time: 112 minutes.