A Peter Pan story told from Wendy’s
perspective sounds either too precious to be
true or ripe for a skewering. But in the hands of
the filmmakers behind “Beasts of the Southern
Wild,” “Wendy” resides — ever so delicately —
in the space between. It is an achingly earnest,
feral, transporting and (very) loose reimagining
of the classic J.M. Barrie tale about not wanting
to grow up.
Gone are the outdated mores and fancy window
dressings of Barrie’s story, however. Here, the
Darlings are a raggedy American family living
in the Deep South and surviving by slinging
eggs and coffee in a diner full of characters
with weathered faces and hearty laughs. In the
opening scene, Wendy, a rosy cheeked toddler
who is already getting a taste of labor helping
her mom crack eggs over the stove, watches
a young boy flee from his plate of bacon and
the horrifying life sentence of possibly growing
up to be a “broom and mop man.” He spots a
shadow figure of a child on a train speeding
by and follows it out of town, away from the
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