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User Reviews for: Peter Pan

dgw
CONTAINS SPOILERS7/10  7 years ago
As soon as Mr. Smee opened his mouth, I knew I'd heard his voice before (and I don't mean from watching this movie as a kid). Adult me is highly amused to find that Smee shares his voice actor with the White Rabbit from _Alice in Wonderland_ (1951)—Bill Thompson. Turns out Kathryn Beaumont (Wendy) was also the voice of Alice in the same film. (Among the many other connections between this and other films of its time, Candy Candido (the Indian Chief's voice) also played a brief uncredited part in _The Wizard of Oz_ (1939) as an angry apple tree, and in _Dumbo_ (1941) as a roaring lion.)

Watching this for the first time in probably 15 years, I realize now what a jealous [spoiler]bitch[/spoiler] Tinkerbell is to Wendy. Didn't really get that when I was a kid—but then, I was just a kid.

Something else I really appreciate now as an art in itself: The crocodile's animations. Whenever he's moving around, we hear the tick-tock of the clock he swallowed, and some part of him is almost always moving in a tick-tock fashion as a nod to that. It's simply perfect.

Having had the chance to watch a great many other cartoons since I last saw this film, I also appreciated the Wile E. Coyote connection: Hook chases Peter off a tall rock and continues stepping in mid-air until Peter points to his feet as if to say "You're standing on nothing," at which point Hook falls. I think the only Wile E. Coyote cartoon that had used a cliff gag of that type at the time this film was produced was the first short, _Fast and Furry-ous_ (1949), but that's early enough that it could have been written into the screenplay for _Peter Pan_ as a nod to Looney Toons.

One last interesting connection I realized: In both _Peter Pan_ and _Pinocchio_ (1940), a character takes a drag on a smoking device of some kind and turns greenish. Here, John takes a pull on the Indians' pipe; in _Pinocchio_, Pinocchio is given a cigar. I'm sure if I did a proper study (if watching every Disney animated film could be called that), I'd find several instances of this. Seems like a subtle anti-smoking message embedded for the kids watching.
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