Finding Neverland: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

(Originally published 2004)

Marc Forster’s “Finding Neverland” is filled with so many heavy-handed moments of forced revelation, audiences are barely allowed to think for themselves.

Production values are excellent and the cast is good. But Forster generates so little magic from what should have been an honest story about a famous playwright and the creative process, this odd, evasive movie only occasionally sparks enough imagination to light the screen.

Beginning in London in 1903, the film follows the Victorian playwright James M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) as he comes to know the family that would come to be the muse for his great children’s classic, “Peter Pan”—widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet), her haughty mother, Emma (Julie Christie), and Sylvia’s four boys, including the lonely Peter (Freddie Highmore).

At the start, we’re told that the movie is inspired by true events, not based on them, which is Hollywood code that the filmmakers have taken great liberties with the truth.

It shows. Throughout, the movie draws slavishly from the more famous elements of “Peter Pan” to offer easy, canned insights into those moments that allegedly inspired key scenes in the play.
Evoking those moments less obviously would have made for a richer movie, but Forster and his screenwriter, David Magee, don’t trust their audience to bridge the connections between the conception of art and art as a finished product. As such, we get a series of “ah-ha!” moments that are wholly manufactured.

Unhappily married to the icy former actress Mary Ansell Barrie (Radha Mitchell), Barrie begins the movie in a slump. His marriage is a sham and his new play, “Little Mary,” is a resounding failure, scolded by critics and audiences alike, which hardly pleases his bristling producer, Charles (Dustin Hoffman).

But then, one day at Kensington Gardens, Barrie’s life takes a turn. There, he meets Sylvia and her boys, who come to give him the sort of affection and attention he doesn’t receive (or give) at home. The boys inspire him. What he sees in them is childhood on the cusp of adulthood, which concerns Barrie to no end, mostly because he’s rather childlike himself. As he sees it, it’s awful to grow up, which these boys are doing far too quickly.

It’s the imagined story Barrie pulls from this story that becomes the basis for “Peter Pan,” with Barrie consistently telling the boys that to endure the hardships of life--such as the death of their father, for instance, or the deepening illness of their mother--all one needs to do is “believe” and everything will be all right.

Will it? As an adult, the real Peter Davies committed suicide, which hints at a darkness “Finding Neverland” doesn’t dare to go near because it would shatter the foundation of its own fantasy.

The moving ending comes close to achieving the depths of despair life has a way of offering. But mostly, this is tidy, well-acted filmmaking wrapped in a sumptuous holiday bow. Some will warm to it, but those who know Barrie’s real story might find themselves clapping not for fairies, but for a better script.

Grade: C