Peter Pan (2003)

ENCHANTING ''Peter Pan'' mixes technology with emotion

Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up, could be the mascot for our entire commodified kiddie culture. The era is now almost too synched to him: When he shows up in the sparkly new CGI-happy version of Peter Pan, sneaking and flying and clowning around, he's immersed in fun, but no more so than your average 11-year-old (or 25-year-old) Game Boy junkie.

Jeremy Sumpter, as Peter, has eyebrows that tilt down with a hint of wry devilry, and Rachel Hurd-Wood, with her ruby mouth parting into the most delicate of smiles, makes Wendy a rare vision of sophisticated innocence; she seems to have walked right out of the 19th century. The director, P.J. Hogan, celebrates Peter's elfin derring-do yet recognizes that there's something a bit lonely about it.

''Peter Pan'' is a bright, whirling pinwheel of a movie that tosses around special effects like confetti, but the techno magic is graced with a touch of sensuality. Tinker Bell, played by ''Swimming Pool'''s Ludivine Sagnier, glows like a lava lamp as she leaves her trail of glitter, and the clouds over Neverland have a rosy impressionist lushness. (You can also bounce around on them.) Jason Isaacs, looking like a debauched Brit demon-metal rock star, plays Hook with just enough nasty smolder to suggest that there's something a tad unseemly in his fixation on Peter and Wendy. If anything gets lost here, it's the appeal of the Lost Boys -- and, for that matter, of Neverland, which looks like the sort of plastic stage-set forest Disney once used as a backdrop in the days of movies like ''The Gnome-Mobile.''