‘Come Away’ goes down a rabbit hole and never comes back
“Come Away” aims at a magical mashup of the legends of “Peter Pan” and “Alice in Wonderland” and so misses, it leaves one perplexed. With an expression of dismay and concern, not a warm sensation. It’s as if it meant to let fly an enchanted arrow at viewers’ hearts and instead grazed the armpit.
Peter (Jordan A. Nash, who needs to be cast as Leslie Odom Jr.’s son at the next opportunity) and Alice (Keira Chansa), along with big brother David ( Reece Yates) enjoy an idyllic existence in a big house somewhere in the woods of Victorian England, making up pirate games all day. Dad (David Oyelowo) is a master craftsman, fashioning immaculate miniature ships for wealthy clients. Mom (Angelina Jolie) is nice, but her sister (Anna Chancellor) is the caricature of the overbearing, malignant aunt (a malignaunt?) who doesn’t have her own kids and works to take these kids away — for their own good, of course. Tragedy strikes and the family starts to come apart. It gets dark.
But wait, isn’t this about “Peter Pan” and “Alice in Wonderland”?
Well, yeah, kind of. Fans will enjoy the bountiful Easter eggs there for the hunting. But unlike, say, “Troy’s” criminally underrated, godfree take on Greek mythology, “Come Away” strips away the magic — then wanders deep into the woods and gets lost. What it’s trying to say about the J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll stories, perhaps about their true meanings, is unclear. Perhaps it’s just a “What if?” take that ties the legends together? The forest is lost among the trees.
What a cast, though. The kids are all fine — Yates, in particular, flashes charisma. Oyelowo radiates fatherly warmth. But that’s not all — Gugu MbathaRaw frames the story and narrates; David Gyasi and Derek Jacobi show up; even Michael Caine deals himself in. “Come Away” is directed by Mill Valley resident Brenda Chapman of Disney/ Pixar’s “Brave,” and it’s the first feature for screenwriter Marissa Kate Goodhill, and I have questions.
The more I think about “Come Away,” the more tragic it becomes, and I don’t think that’s intentional. I summarized it to my kids, and it came out nightmarishly. The ending that seems meant to be wistful, even magical, reads instead as appalling, lamentable, gloomy, however you want to say “the opposite of wondrous and happy.”
Yet the music, the performances, the visual effects insist this is lovely. This is fine. Is it intended to be a bitterly ironic expose of a family’s disintegration? Maybe. Maybe! Maybe?
But let’s talk a little about these parents. The going gets tough, and they get going down some deep rabbit holes of their Town. For one (maybe both), addiction is a plot device but not explored as part of the person. They do terribly destructive things instead of helping the kids cope. Maybe Malignaunt has a point. That might be why the kids retreat into worlds of fantasy, but that’s an awfully pitchblack take on Pan and Alice (though it wouldn’t be the first).
There’s even an explainer of Alice’s trippy adventure that involves distraught Mom’s mysterious potion. Let’s just say of these parents that Child Protective Services wouldn’t be laudin’ ’ em.
“Come Away” takes some big swings, and for that, a tip of the elfin cap. And let’s not brush aside its diversity — this kind of revisionist fictional Victorian England is welcome, why not? Not everyone believes Santa Claus, for instance, must be white. But sadly, the movie stumbles on its way to fantasyland.