REVIEW: Peter & the Wolf [2023]

Rating: TV-PG | Runtime: 33 minutes
Release Date: October 19th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Max
Director(s): Elliot Dear & Stephen McNally
Writer(s): Bono (story) / Sergei Prokofiev (libretto)

We can find courage when we need it the most.

Written in 1936, Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf uses its children’s tale to introduce a young audience to the orchestral wonders of each instrument used to create a theme around its characters. I have no recollection of ever reading, watching, or hearing the piece whatsoever and yet its ubiquity has made it so I know the main segment (“Peter”) very well. The moment it starts playing in Elliot Dear and Stephen McNally new animated short, my ears couldn’t help but perk up.

Inspired by a 2003 box set collaboration between Gavin Friday (who narrates), Maurice Seezer (who arranged the music) and Bono (who illustrates with daughters Jordan and Eve Hewson), the thirty-minute piece brings the charitable enterprise to the masses—complete with a continued relationship with the Irish Hospice Foundation. The style is much more polished than the U2 frontman’s original drawings, but his line work does play a role nonetheless … especially where it concerns the wolf.

The film’s animation is a decent hybrid between hand-drawn and computer-generated with sets and (most) objects rendered with the latter and characters moving above them via the former. There’s Peter, Bird, Duck, Cat, Grandfather, and Wolf all living in close proximity around a stone fenced home within a forested meadow. While the whole feels familiar in many regards (save the black and white monochrome augmented by splashes of red), the real intrigue lies in the superimposition of Bono’s zigzag-toothed wolf upon the figure itself as a sort of mask manifested by Peter’s fear.

With notions of love and loss firmly at the forefront, it’s not until the boy realizes what the wolf is to her own family that he understands the nuance of what it means to be a “protector” and how defense can be construed as aggressive. Just because she might kill and snarl doesn’t necessarily mean she’s bad, though. It doesn’t mean she has to die at the hands of hunters who want nothing more than to parade her corpse around town. So, with a little ingenuity, Peter might just be able to ensure they can’t.

Bookended by Bono himself painting upon vertical glass, I would have liked other “behind the curtain” looks. Maybe show the orchestra and highlight the instruments rather than simply letting their respective themes be drowned out by effects? (Although Duck provides some excellent physical comedy.) Friday’s sunglass-wearing bug of a narrator is a nice bit of flair, but the rest can almost feel too safe at times. Not that it isn’t still quite lovely. I just must wonder if it being tailor-made for an Oscar nomination on celebrity power alone doesn’t also expose a missed opportunity for more.