Sir James Barrie -- knight, playwright, and pederast -- blurred the edges. In the movie, Peter loves Wendy. In the original, Peter loves Tinkerbell -- but quickly forgets her when she dies. Really, he only loves himself. The idea that twelve-year-old boys fall in love with twelve-year-old girls is sentimental Hollywood hokum. It never happens outside of movies.

Peter Pan is still popular as a stage play -- it returns to Broadway every few years, and is a favorite of high-school theater. Everybody gets to try the flying rig after the last performance. Songs by a variety of composers have been added to the play. The good songs, especially "I've Gotta Crow," almost make up for the bad (Uga-wug Uga-wug Uga-wug Waah!). This new film version is not a musical, although some of Sir James Barrie's original music is used. Hook, improbably, plays one piece two-handed. There is also a snatch of music by Sir Arthur Sullivan.

But the best parts of the play are missing in all the movies. Hook's great soliloquy, "No little children love me...," has been left out. Sir James could write! "Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it." I recommend to you some of Barrie's other plays. Dear Brutus is my favorite. Barrie's charming female characters remind me of similar characters in the work of Edger Pangborn.

To say that there are problems with Barrie's work is to state the obvious. The Victorian Era, famous for its prudishness, was paradoxically tolerant of Barrie's interest in little boys, as it was of Lewis Carroll's interest in little girls. These days, Barrie and Carroll would be in jail. Can great art excuse great crimes? William Faulkner said, "'The Ode to a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies." Is Peter Pan worth the life of a child? One of the children Sir James Barrie adopted killed himself. Can you make up for doing evil by doing good? Hundreds of children's lives have been saved by Barrie's bequest of all royalties from Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.

When the film uses dialogue from the play or from the book -- and the film quotes the book a good deal -- the dialogue sparkles. Unfortunately most of the dialogue written especially for the film is leaden.

"Do you believe in fairies?" Barrie wanted a resounding, "Yes!" and during his lifetime he got it. Remember that rational adults, the most famous example is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, believed in fairies in those days. No more. Tinkerbell's death scene is difficult to stage today. It asks the audience to pretend to believe. The movie gets this scene right.

A few, a very few, of the scenes created for the movie are interesting. The episode where Wendy quits the Lost Boys and joins Hook actually works, thanks to a remarkable actress and actor. But most of the film plods and parts are offensive -- the cowardly begging of Michael and John at Hook's feet, for example.

So, while the film has its moments, it is ultimately no more successful than any of the many other failed attempts to film what cannot be filmed. See the play. Read the book.