“Two children stand on a stage, sweetly fumbling their lines. “Don’t you know what a kiss is?” says one of the children. “I shall, if you give one to me,” says the other, before being handed a thimble. So begins Steven Spielberg’s 1991 film, Hook, adapting the opening act of J.M. Barrie’s play, Peter Pan, for an audience of proud parents. Sure, opening the film with children performing the play is a bit of meta-fictional cleverness. But it also serves as a mission statement for a film that prizes above all the wild logic of a child’s imagination. In Peter Pan’s world, a thimble is a kiss, clapping brings fairies back to life, and a magical world can be reached by flying to the “second star on the right, and straight on till morning.” Barrie’s gift to children was to fully indulge their playtime escapism. In Hook, Spielberg does the same, while also daring parents to indulge in the same way.”

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