Movies I Always Watch - "Hook"

This is probably an odd choice for the list of "Movies I Always Watch"  But I just love this "kid" movie and even own it.  I recently watched it with kids who'd never seen it, and they seemed to love it too, so I guess it has held up well.  The movie, starring Robin Williams is a Steven Spielberg movie, but not one of his bigger hits.  The movie came out in 1991, and I remember going to see it with my parents on a Saturday afternoon.  I often met them for Saturday movies, during that time, a habit they'd had since their childhoods.  That particular time for me had been a bumpy ride, and going to the movies was a weekly escape, and this movie did the trick like none I'd seen in a long time.

The storyline is a variation on the Peter Pan story, with a tag line, "What if Peter Pan grew up?"  The grown up Peter, played by Williams, is a lawyer, married, 2 kids, and no memory of the fact that he was/is Peter Pan.  All the childhood adventures in Never Never Land are lost on him, until a series of events begin to cause him to remember.  I don't want to give away too much of the plot, because you really should see it.  Dustin Hoffman is amazing as Captain Hook. 

The surprise of the movie was Julia Roberts, as Tinkerbell (a childhood favorite character of mine).  Tinkerbell loves Peter, but the adult Peter thinks she's a hallucination. She helps him remember, and get back to Never Land. 

Easy for me to understand why this movie resounded with me so strongly.  As a child I was drawn to stories with magic, fairies, princes, and castles.  As children, we're always yearning to be older, then some of us get to a point in life when we realize what we've lost as adults.  The sense of wonder, of unbelievable things happening................this movie stirs all that up.

If you love childhood fantasy movies, and have never seen this, you should.  If you think you don't like these kind of movies, maybe you're just the person who should see it.  Maybe you've forgotten what it's like to be a child.  That would be a shame.  You have to remember your happy thought.

My favorite line in the movie, comes at the very end, when "Tink" is talking to Peter after all the adventures. She's heading back to Never Land, but Peter is staying in the real world.

Peter Banning: [sees Tinkerbell on the Peter Pan statue] Tink!


Tinkerbell: Say it, Peter. Say it and mean it.

Peter Banning: I believe in fairies.

Tinkerbell: You know that place between sleep and awake? That place where you still remember dreaming?

[Peter nods]

Tinkerbell: That's where I'll always love you... Peter Pan. That's where I'll be waiting.