In Australian filmmaker P.J. Hogan's take on the tale, Peter is charisma-free and a bad enunciator to boot. Some will blame young actor Jeremy Sumpter, but one suspects that a great deal of directorial intervention was required to make a kid look so mirthless when flying around and battling pirates. If Richard Linklater can fill a whole classroom with smart, lively juvenile actors, surely Hogan — whose wardrobe budget alone probably cost more than all of "School of Rock" — could recruit an actor with a sparkle in his eye.

If his acting dollars were poorly spent, at least the filmmaker lets us see where the rest of the money went: His production design is eye-poppingly lavish, from the Victorian home of the Darling family (whose Wendy, John and Michael, you'll recall, are whisked away by Pan) to the pink-and-blue skies of Neverland, where Peter and company bounce on clouds that look like trampolines made of cotton candy. From Captain Hook's beautiful hats and menacing prostheses to the grizzled parrot who flits around his ship, there's plenty to see here.

(On the topic of "plenty to see": Dads in the crowd with a taste for French cinema may suffer an uncomfortable moment when they realize that Peter's fairy Tinkerbell is played by Ludivine Sagnier, the object of so much lust in this summer's "Swimming Pool.")

The eye candy gets fairly oppressive near the end, when Pan's crew fights Hook's during the world's most syrupy sunset. It's "Pirates of the Caribbean" as designed by Maxfield Parrish — only without Johnny Depp, which misses the point completely.

Pretty pictures aside, there isn't a lot to love about "Peter Pan." In the pre-Neverland sequence, Hogan is hobbled by the memory of his animated forebears. Mr. Darling, striving to overcome his timidity in the workplace, is handled cartoonishly, especially when he's humiliated by a kid-sliding-on-kid-sliding-on-dog stunt that's straight from the Disney playbook. Other story elements that played well for tots when animated — like Wendy sewing Peter's runaway shadow back onto him — become slightly unsettling in the literal-mindedness of live action.

That and the fact that many pirates actually die onscreen may bother parents of young children, but the screenplay's emphasis on Peter's stunted emotions is likely to annoy everyone. "Oh no! He cannot love," Hook warns Wendy at one point, prompting viewers to wonder if that's such a tragic thing for a 12-year-old.

After an awkward emotional showdown between the middle-school lovebirds, Hook slips poison to Pan and little Tink drinks it instead. To save her, Pan starts a chant ("I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!") that magically spreads around the world. Moviegoers who winced when the cast of "Magnolia" sang Aimee Mann's "Wise Up" in unison would do well to visit the concession stand around now.

The sing-along-phobic aren't the only ones who could do without this movie: Its frequent slow passages make it a tough sell for the very young; its hollow psychology and overall lack of joy make it a drag for the more mature. Aside from some nice performances in bit parts — Hook's sidekick Smee and some of Pan's "lost boys" are fun — the film's main asset is its production design. And even there, the ostentatious fakery of it all is just about enough to make Neverland feel a bit less interesting than the plain ol' real world.