Hook

Steven Spielberg – 1991 – USA

Possibly Spielberg’s worst film, or at least his most reprehensible; the one in which everything tactless and cloying about his style is at its shameless height.  This was a low-point for Spielberg and one is acutely aware while watching the film that he is on auto-pilot while straining to find his voice again, (which he eventually did with the extraordinary double release of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in 1993; the year’s highest grossing film and its biggest Oscar winner, respectively).  Virtually the only thing about Hook that interests me is its autobiographical aspect; the notion of an adult man surrounded by people telling him that he is supposed to be acting like a child, and his ambivalence about the idea.  But where the grown Peter Pan (Robin Williams) is compelled – according to movie clichés – to agree that he should preserve his child’s point-of-view, Spielberg himself took a path to maturity; a path that has given us some grim films like Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Munich (2005).  He has continued to make family-friendly movies from time to time, often with a child as a major or main character, but we have fortunately been spared anything as awkward and painful as Hook.