Peter Pan & Wendy is Disney’s latest live-action remake (the animated version was in 1953) and it’s quite the sombre affair. It takes itself and its story so seriously that I kept waiting for it to be fun and it never was. There is an underlying sadness to J.M. Barrie’s original story, but it is also funny and joyous and exciting. Flying! Fairy dust! Ticking crocodiles! Pirates! That’s all here but somehow the magic is missing. Still, Captain Hook is played by Jude Law, who is at that stage in his career where he’s determined to have a good time and, from the look of it, he is definitely having a good time. At least one of us did (she says, resentfully).

The film is directed and co-written by David Lowery who made the live-action version of Pete’s Dragon, which is the best Disney remake yet, apparently. Peter Pan, meanwhile, is one of those stories that, like its protagonist, never seems to get old. It first appeared as a play in 1904 – ‘a delicious frolic’, said the Times review, ‘full of quiet wisdom and sweet charity, under its surface of wild fun’ – and there have been many screen adaptations since. My favourite, if it’s of interest, is P.J. Hogan’s 2003 version starring Jason Isaacs as both Mr Darling and Captain Hook, which I think gets the balance just right – subtle and wistful yet also, yes, wild fun. Plus it has Richard Briers as Smee, and you just can’t quarrel with that.

This version does not bother with much preamble. Barrie made Mr and Mrs Darling (Alan Tudyk, Molly Parker) endearingly nuts, but here they are sober, stern characters and barely get a look-in. Same with Nana, the Newfoundland that is the children’s nanny, played fleetingly by a St Bernard. (Is it wrong to want more of Nana, licking the children clean and carrying them to bed on her back?) The children are, of course, Wendy (Ever Anderson), who in this iteration is on the brink of attending boarding school, and her little brothers: John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe) who is never parted from his teddy (a teddy).

This initially follows the expected trajectory with Peter Pan appearing at the nursery window in search of his shadow, accompanied by Tinkerbell (Yara Shahidi), who is a strangely bland character throughout. (Is it wrong to want her to initially treat Wendy with spite, and pull her hair?) A sprinkle of fairy dust and the children can fly – still, kids: don’t do drugs – and they’re soaring over Edwardian London, turning right at the second star, carrying on until morning to reach Neverland. This Neverland is not a dazzling, fantastical place. It’s rugged, with muted colours, and more like a Scottish island. Skye, maybe. They join up with the Lost Boys, who now count girls among their number and a fella with Down’s syndrome. This will, I know, prove trying for those who think films should just carry on pretending certain people don’t exist.

There is swashbuckling and the ticking crocodile and Smee (Jim Gaffigan) but the narrative always feels perfunctory and inert possibly because there’s just no spark between any of the characters, least of all Wendy and Peter, who is portrayed as a sulky kind of chap. What the film tries to bring to the party is more heft (and sympathy) to Hook, who is awarded a tragic backstory and is less the pantomime villain. I wasn’t especially convinced. The most tragic thing about him was, to my mind, the Lemmy from Motörhead hair-do. Still, Law is obviously having the best time and is the best thing in it, if solely by virtue of having charisma. I don’t want to be mean about the child performers but, well, you know.