Steven Spielberg directs Robin Williams,Dustin Hoffman and Julia Roberts in this fantasy where a middle aged Peter Pan journeys back to Neverland to rescue his kids. 

I must have watched Hook as a child… must have… yet my only distinct memory of it was a faded poster for its release staying up far, far too long round the back of the Greenford Sainsbury’s car park. Still, it is all a bit shit, ain’t it? Especially considering the pedigree. We spend 35 loooooooong minutes before we even get in sniffing distance to Neverland, with Spielberg photocopying his moments of wonder from better, more inspired blockbusters and Williams being a dullard (albeit with excellent improv skills) around his horrid kids. Then we get to Neverland and it is chaotic yet monotone, ambitious yet flimsy, garish yet hollow all at the same time. The stars all seems to have turned up on different weeks and their footage assembled together on an AVID. The action is sparse, bloodless and lacklustre. The overwhelming amount of sequences with the achingly 1991 vintage, yet charmless lost boys are frustratingly neverending. Julia Roberts sole expression as Tinkerbell looks like she’s done a wet fart in her tights and is smiling to cover up while waiting for an adult to come along to change her. And Hoffman’s Hook is given so, so little to occupy himself with while it all unravels around him… so that it would have been more sensible to call the whole epic fail Smee!… or Steven Spielberg’s Thud Butt. Probably the wunderkind’s weakest, most directionless, least appealing work. They can’t all be winners, kid! I wonder if that poster is still there?

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