Psycho's Movie Reviews #321: Come Away (2020)

Come Away is a 2020 fantasy drama film directed by Brenda Chapman and starring David Oyelowo, Anna Chancellor, Angelina Jolie, Michael Caine, Clarke Peters, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Gyasi and Derek Jacobi. The film is a homage to the stories of Peter Pan and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Come Away had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2020 and was released in the United States on November 13, 2020, by Relativity Media and was released in the United Kingdom on December 18, 2020, by Signature Entertainment. It is Relativity's first theatrically-released film since 2016's Masterminds.

Plot

While siblings, Peter and Alice, struggle to help their parents cope with the loss of their eldest son, David, they find themselves pulled into different fantasy worlds.

The film depicts the title characters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Peter Pan as siblings trying to help their parents overcome the death of their eldest son.

Production

The project was announced in May 2016, with The Prince of Egypt and Brave co-director Brenda Chapman hired to direct.

In May 2018, Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo were cast to play the parents of Alice and Peter, with both actors also taking producer roles. In August 2018, Anna Chancellor, Clarke Peters, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Caine, David Gyasi, Derek Jacobi and Jenny Galloway joined the cast. Additional financing came from Ace Pictures, Creasun Entertainment USA and Tin Res Entertainment; executive producers include David Haring, Minglu Ma, George Acogny, Timur Bekbosunov, Johnny Chang, Peter Wong, Emma Lee, Gia Muresan, Simon Fawcett and Steve Barnett.

Filming commenced at Shad Thames in London in August 2018, as well as Windsor Great Park in both the South Forest and around Johnson's pond. In October 2018, the production moved to Los Angeles before concluding later that month.

Release/Reception/Box Office

It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2020. In October 2020, Relativity Media acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film and had its release on November 13, 2020.

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 29% of 69 reviews of the film were positive, with an average rating of 4.9/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Largely lacking the fairy tale magic it seeks to conjure, Come Away is an initially intriguing fantasy that never really takes flight." According to Metacritic, which sampled 17 critic reviews and calculated a weighted average score of 40 out of 100, the film received "mixed or average reviews".

After its Sundance premiere, Ben Pearson of Slash Film gave a positive review by stating "A new children's classic has arrived, and this timeless fairy tale will surely enchant audiences for generations to come." John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter gave a negative review by stating "A wealth of familiar storybook material and a cast including Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo will draw attention, but a handsome production and beautiful cast aren't enough to get this fantasy off the ground." Conversely, Peter Bradshaw, writing in The Guardian, gave the film one star out of a possible five, describing it as "a muddled, leaden fantasy adventure for Christmas which feels as if someone put all the Quality Streets in a saucepan and melted them together, with the wrappers still on an indigestible lump of star turns, superstar cameos and references to classic children’s literature".

In its opening weekend the film grossed $108,000 from 475 theatres.

Box office $886,643

My Review

Of the well-known tale of Peter Pan that explores addictions, racism, classism, and the eternal conflict between imagination/creativity and the dull daily grind.

There's enough surface of children's adventure & trials for kids to get into the story, and enough subtext/context for parents to find it engrossing. The terrors that both adult & child characters face are initially age appropriate and not-too-threatening. However, the story darkens, and the characters' varied means of coping with grief & loss are only too understandable in a time when millions of families are struggling with those very emotions.

There's also resonance with generational sibling rivalries and the children's efforts to understand & categorize the various adults through their limited life experiences.

Mingling both adult and child oriented stories in a single pretty, gritty movie is a complex undertaking. The balance is a challenge to attain and maintain. But it works, especially in the mother/daughter relationship, the slow creep of addictions, the terror of watching parents disintegration, & the chase for some brighter fantasy future where pain is no more. A great many children can identify with those terrible family dysfunctions far more than the adults around them might wish to believe.

It's understated performances like this that from Angelina Jolie that remind us she was an accomplished actor long before she became a sex symbol. She easily holds her own against BAFTA-nominated Anna Chancellor, who generates surprising moments of warmth for an actor more often cast as (and here plays) cold, officious, self-righteous.

The gold paint that rubs off the coins is the perfect visual metaphor for this movie. Everyone seeks to first create the ideal world and then, when the gold wears off, to survive through such escapes as are available, however dangerous or self-sabotaging they may be. Ultimately, although children won't catch the subtlety, sisters never stop hoping their brothers will come home.

This movie was very different than how I imagined it, but I found it surprisingly heartfelt. I enjoyed the exploration of grief and the changes it can cause, good and bad, and how everyone needs to eventually come to terms with it. I thought the Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan references fit nicely into the story that we were experiencing, heightening the emotional impact by allowing us to see how the children were viewing their world. The ending was a little weird to me, but I suppose it's one of those endings that really makes you think, where the directors really wanted each person to interpret it differently. But I also loved the message of kids staying kids and how there is a time to grow up, but it doesn't have to come too soon and that growing up doesn't mean loosing your imagination and adventure. I thought it was a beautiful movie. 8/10