Neverland

This Syfy-aired original movie from writer-director Nick Willing serves up a Peter Pan origin story involving mysterious orbs, dimensional portals, and a crew of Dickensian street urchins led by a Fagin-like mentor in Victorian England. Rhys Ifans plays the genuinely paternal and protective James Hook, who embarks on a search for rumored treasure that whisks him and his boys to a neverland where pixie-like spirits fly through the air, pirates roam the sea, and no one ages. While Hook throws his lot in with the pirates (commanded by a female captain played by Anna Friel), Peter (Charlie Rowe) sides with the Indians (similarly sucked through a portal from their peaceful pre-Columbian existence), after which his striving to win the respect of his foster father turns into conflict. Granted, the narrative seems a little padded at nearly three hours, and the TV-scale special effects occasionally come across as a bit cheesy, but Neverland is a clever prequel to J.M. Barrie's beloved novel and the backstory presented here smartly complements Barrie's lost boys, while suggesting a plausible source of the eternal struggle between Peter and Hook. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)