Return to Never Land

The sequel to Disney’s version of Sir James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (after 48 years—surely a record) finds Captain Hook raiding London during the Blitz to kidnap the girl Wendy—except that Wendy’s grown up now and Hook has taken her daughter Jane instead. Amusing and enjoyable (with an honorable effort to duplicate the long-gone voices of the original actors), the film, despite its 1940s setting, teems with 21st-century Grrrl Power: where Wendy’s brothers went adventuring with Peter, Jane’s brother stays home in London; where Wendy played mother to the Lost Boys, Jane is just one of the guys. (And needless to say, Tinker Bell bonds with Jane as she never did with Wendy; her catty jealousy is a thing of the past.) Oddly, the computer-generated flying scenes are less impressive this time.