The Movie: Come Away
The Director: Branda Chapman
The Cast: David Oyelowo, Jordan Nash, Keira Chansa, Reece Yates, Anna Chancellor, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Angelina Jolie, Derek Jacobi, Michael Caine
The Story: When their eldest brother dies, Peter and Alice seek to save their parents from despair until they are forced to choose between home and imagination, setting the stage for their iconic journeys into Wonderland and Neverland.
The Review:
For many years, movie studios were churning out remake after remake to the point where the movie going public began to wonder if there was any originality left in cinema. Of course, studios are still doing this because it's a profitable model although there has been a bit of a shift towards reimagining stories that are ubiquitous around the world. In this case, if I say the names Peter and Alice, you immediately recognize those names as classic fairy tale characters who have been turned into culture icons thanks to the entertainment machine founded by Mr. Walt Disney.
Honestly, I'm not sure if Peter or Alice needed a reimagining although who's to say any character does and yet here we are. I will say that the cast brought together for this movie is pretty fantastic with Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo of course leading the way. There are also brief appearances from Michael Caine, Anna Chancellor, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw each of whom takes full advantage of the time they have on screen. Finally, Peter and Alice are played by Jordan Nash and Keira Chansa respectively and they are both respectable in their performances.
My primary concern with this movie and my main disappointment is that the story is just not very interesting. If not for the cast, I feel like I would have lost interest very quickly and it would have been a mighty struggle to get through what is a pretty short run time of just over 90 minutes. The movie has lavish production values and looks bright and colorful where needed and appropriately dark and ominous when called for yet all of it also just felt like the type of made for TV movie that you might seen on a Sunday evening on network television.
The Verdict:
Come Away is a movie with big ideas and it wants to be something truly special yet it suffers from never being more than mediocre. Not even a more than competent cast was able to keep this from being a movie that will be forgotten well before all of the pixie dust has settled to the ground.
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