It doesn't work.
Yeah, much of what Sterling says is true. The set and prop and costume design is all terrific. Hoffman does a really good Hook, and Hoskins does a terrific Shmee. Williams I can take or leave, and I can see why people would feel either way, but that leaves me free to say that it wasn't a bad performance. I feel much the same way about Roberts, though her character's whole presence seems kind of perfunctory; a third hand stapled on during later surgery because for some reason we had to have Tinkerbell.
But on an underlying level, it just doesn't work. When you have people throwing pies on one plane and getting into utterly real and lethal sword battles on another plane of the same fight- seriously, f@$% whatever kind of so-called "whimsy" that allows anyone to witness that and not go "what the hell is wrong with you people?!" It. Does. Not. Work.
Barrie's Peter Pan and Captain Hook were locked into an eternal struggle that worked because they were something like mythical archetypes, dream-shadows of childhood- the evil pirate versus the mischevious, never-aging trickster. Even the maiming that gave Hook his hook was something that happened long-ago, somewhere offstage. It was a backdrop that allowed stereotypical Indians, fairies, pirates, and man-eating crocodiles that pursued their quarries across the ocean to co-exist without a second glance.
Hook tries to extend that sense of disbelief to "logical" real-world conclusions and falters.
