Finding Neverland

This is a reasonably interesting and fascinating look at J M Barrie, and his relationship with the Llewellyn-Davies family, and his inspiration for one of the greatest literary pieces in English - Peter Pan. The recreation of the original stage productions was very interesting and impressive. The actors playing the actors were very fun and sincere, and the whole backstage subplot was certainly a highlight of the film. Johnny Depp has certainly come a long way in his career, and this role is certainly a demonstration of the nuance and emotional depth he can achieve in his performances now. Very dramatic serio-comedy with a large dose of imagination seems to be his specialty. I can remember when he was just a young teen magazine heart-throb starring in a TV drama show with ambitions of being a pop star. And I thought the oldest son George was very convincing and well-played, with another good performance that mixes light comedy and light drama. (Spoiler Warning) But this storyline is totally killed by the deadly slow pacing, self conscious "serious" drama delivery, maudlin story developments, and heavily clichéd "big sentimental tearful" moments. The final scene had me heading for the doors in stomach-churning nausea. In fact the whole final fifteen minutes or so just about erased the whole effect of the rest of the film, which I thought was rather tolerable. Let's face it; this script has "pretentious award-nominated" practically stamped all over it. It doesn't really say anything meaningful to a contemporary viewer. It's just a cynical exercise in emotional manipulation which is what's passing off for "serious, legitimate, proper drama" in modern cinema. Sure, the idea that people need to keep their inner child and be accessible to the vivid imagination within is a commendable theme. But illustrating it with a sentimental character death and feel-good phrases presented by a weeping child is not the most creative or interesting way to present the idea. It's almost like we're going backwards to the sensibilities of the Victorian Age all over again. I guess Peter Allen got it right - "Everything Old Is New Again".

When watching this movie, with it's deterministic cause and effect, wall-to-wall clichés and hackneyed sentiment, can anyone be so naive as to think that this is actually how Barrie's life played out? You watch it in a posture of disagreement. Hollywood biopics aren't based on the individual lives anymore, they're just rewrites of previously successful biopics. If Hollywood made a movie about your life it would be filled with such perfect synchronization that you'd barely recognize your own story. Any personal complexity would be obliterated by some all-explaining, simplistic backstory. Your story would resemble "Rocky" because it's the only life-arc Hollywood knows how to produce anymore. We couldn't leave the audience pondering anything left open-ended as they exit. This movie doesn't trust an audience to figure things out without being led to them. I perceived the captain hook/mother reference eons before the movie literalized it for me. I could see the 25 kids twist coming for days. This is a completely average movie. Not horrible but not great. Hence it's likely to be showered with a few Oscars next year. There's nothing the Academy likes better than congratulating itself for finally noticing patterns put in place over the previous thirty years. From the New Yorker article "Lost Boys" by ANTHONY LANE: "Arthur Llewelyn Davies, also adored his boys, and it may be unfair of "Finding Neverland" to omit him, for streamlining purposes, from the scene; by the time that Johnny Depp meets Kate Winslet, she is already a widow, whereas Arthur was very much alive when Barrie first entered the consciousness—and, little by little, the home—of the Llewellyn Davies family. "Finding Neverland" is a weepie. From the moment that Barrie met George and Jack, and started to ponder the means by which they might be rendered immortal, the story is sad, but the reality is even more dismal: 1907—Arthur Llewellyn Davies dies from cancer of the jaw. 1910—Sylvia dies of lung cancer. The five boys are orphaned; Barrie is made their guardian. 1915—George is killed in the First World War, fighting with his regiment in Flanders. 1921—Michael, an undergraduate at Oxford, is drowned while swimming with a friend. The two bodies, when recovered, are found clinging together. On April 5, 1960, Peter Llewellyn Davies, by then an esteemed publisher, threw himself under a subway train in London. We should not presume to read a mind in torment, but we may note in passing that, if he had lived another month, he would have reached the centenary of Barrie's birth and thus, one imagines, a fresh flurry of interest in "Peter Pan"—"that terrible masterpiece," in the words of Peter Llewellyn Davies.

Of course it takes liberties with the truth, not the first biographical drama to do that, but I cannot deny that Finding Neverland was very magical and affecting and was beautifully crafted not only in visuals but in acting too. Plus it made me believe in Peter Pan again, and that is a wonderful feeling as Peter Pan is one of my all-time favourite stories. The cinematography, costumes, locations and scenery are absolutely stunning, and the score gives the film its magical feeling. The script had its deft touches, the story had a perfect balance of the humorous and the tragic, and director Marc Forster deserves credit for making even those mundane events into something somewhat enchanting. The acting is wonderful too- Johnny Depp is nothing short of magnificent as JM Barrie as he alternates between being playful and sensitive, it was his sensitive side especially that made his performance so good. Kate Winslet is very tender as Sylvia and Dustin Hoffmann impresses in a smaller role. Even the kids were good, especially Freddie Highmore who offers a wonderful portrayal as the serious-minded Peter. In conclusion, beautiful film, very affecting when it needed to be and quite magical to say the least. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Finding Neverland is one of the best films I have seen all year. Depp and Winslet are superb and their supporting cast is very strong in particular Julie Christie, Dustin Hoffman and Freddie Highmore. Forster's direction is tight and he maintains a story which had the potential to drag. Depp delivers a performance that is truly believable and he interacts with his co-stars well, in particular, Freddie Highmore who delivers a performance that outshines Depp's. It is a tour de force of acting talent. Clearly Highmore has a great career ahead of him. 9/10 for a superb piece of film-making, made diligently but, unfortunately, up against such strong contention, it had to make do with a disappointing award haul.

I found this to be just as nice a movie as it was advertised. I've seen it twice as of this review and liked it immensely more the second time. It helped that I now knew Freddie Highmore from his subsequent starring role in "Charlie And The Chocolate Factory" and it helped to watch this on my best TV which highlighted the magnificent cinematography in here. This is simply a beautifully-filmed movie, stunning in parts, and a touching story that gets you involved and makes you think. It's nice to see Johnny Depp step out of character and play a clean-cut, wholesome-looking guy instead of some wacky weirdo. He did a great job of it, too, coming across as a very likable character: J.M. Barrie, the author of "Peter Pan." The story offers an interesting dilemma: was Barrie an innocent friend helping out a family desperately in need a father figure, or was he "out of bounds" spending too much time with another family while he had a wife sitting home alone? The answer is the latter, even though the movie slants in favor of the former. Despite Barrie's good intentions, his first commitment was still with his wife. However, he was so good with those four kids in this film that it's hard to totally find fault with him. Hightower is the youngest of four kids left without a dad. The older brothers are good kids and all of them are good actors. You rarely hear their real names, so here they are: Joe Prospero, Nick Road and Luke Spill. Kate Winslet plays the mother and she, too, is excellent in this film. Radha Mitchell plays Barrie's wife and handles a tough situation in an interesting manner. Also in smaller-but-important roles are two big-name actors: Dustin Hoffman and Julie Christie. I really can't find much fault with this movie except that the first 30 minutes might be a little slow. If you know that in advance and stick with it, it's a wonderful and rewarding movie experience. Except for a quick one-second outburst in the beginning, there is absolutely no offensive language and anyone of any age should be able to watch and enjoy this. Overall, it's an interesting story of how the man who wrote "Peter Pan" came to do so.

Every holiday season Harvey Weinstein and Miramax talk up one of their properties, fully expecting everyone to bow and throw awards at it as soon as it's released. This year it's Finding Neverland, which has produced a lot of buzz in favor of Johnny Depp's sophisticated performance. Although the film deserves all the praise it gets, it is understandable that moviegoers are a little weary with another dramatic period piece, with another "oscar caliber" cast, about yet another take on Peter Pan. The bottom line is, this movie is phenomenal. Exploring the major theme of Barrie's play (that of a boy who never grows up), Finding Neverland refrains from condemning grown-ups, but exalts the wild magic one can enjoy as a kid. For James, who had to deal with his family's reticence upon the death of his brother, the real tragedy occurs when a child is forced to grow up too fast. My favorite idea from this film is this: life finds a way to put into our lives the people we're supposed to be living our lives with. James and Sylvia needed each other, and they needed each other at that particular time. Life took care of them. The film does indeed move at a snail's pace. Consider that part of the set design. Just as the characters go about 1905 London in top hats and buttoned-down gowns, so does the movie develop in a manner which would have been fitting for a time which preceded MTV-generation attention spans by about a hundred years. As for the acting, it is wonderful. Depp is understated and gallant, Kate Winslet is lovely and tragic, and they're both better than I've ever seen them. Julie Christie is brutally ominous as the matriarch who can gum up everyone's happiness. Dustin Hoffman, although out of place, brings a dry wit as a risk-taking businessman. The boys playing the Davis kids are a lot of fun to watch and play their dramatic parts perfectly. If you want something where all the pieces of the magic puzzle that is movie-making come together with grace, charm, and humanity, you won't find a more rewarding film than this.

FINDING NEVERLAND simply lets Johnny Depp fly from being everybody's best friend in the extremely slick and stylish pirate Jack Sparrow into a mind-opener, writer and failed in success James M. Barrie. Kate Winslet goes from the giggling, weird, mood-swinging Clementine from Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, into a lost but in the same time cheerful widow Sylvia L. Davies. It's truly a beautiful little masterpiece. FINDING NEVERLAND is such charming, excellent in every way that you simply can't find anything negative about it. It's truly wonderful scenes as Depp's writer character hanging out with the family, trying to get a kite in the air is just so beautiful watching. But FINDING NEVERLAND finds it true class work in it's changes from fantasy and reality, seeing threw the eyes of a mind-unlocking Johnny Depp that sees everything else than we see in happenings. As when the Davies' family's strict grandmother points at one of the small boys, Barrie sees a hook in the old woman's hand and we can clearly see him shaping and creating the character of Captain Hook. Threw all the beautiful scenes and truly inspiring settings, there are nice laughs put between and emotional work on the finest piece of work. Creating great settings as a small house on the county side, a elegant theater - all off course having its special place in the whole movie the picking of locations and moods are really breathtaking. Johnny Depp does one of his best character performances ever, and with fine dialogs and fine poetic sentences threw the movie this can't do anything than be one big, charming beauty in his filmography. The whole idea of making a movie about how the writer of Peter Pan invented and started creating it, it's itself just original and great. James Barrie being a successful writer are having dry times with his pen and paper, making disappointing plays, and with the theater owner Frohman counting 100% on him. While sitting in the park he suddenly bumps into a widow and her boys, this awakes a magic inside him and spending a summer with the family he gets new, incredible ideas and starts writing like never before. Although having problems with his wife, James Barrie realises that he has to put everything in his mind to create this play into something that would become Peter Pan.. STARS: 5/5

Spoilers herein. Never have I been so disappointed. This movie is right up my alley: I'm studying so-called 'folded' films. A fine example is when you have a movie that has a play inside it and the reality of the two blur, like with 'French Lieutenant's Woman.' This has another layer, the 'neverland' which folds into both. And the physics of neverland contain the mechanism for folding: 'just believe.' Somehow the producers knew that the material required folded actors. These are rare, possibly fewer than ten but include Kate and Johnny. I suppose the producer in question was Michael Dreyer who worked on a very similarly folded 'Iris,' also with Kate. They also made a very obvious choice: Dustin and Christie to represent the 'old' school of non-folding. Hoffman's character does nothing but shake his head over the lunacy of the project. A built in advantage is that everyone knows 'Peter Pan.' And most filmgoers will know some of Depp's man-child characters. Some may even know Kate's first significant role (Juliet Hulme) was based on Wendy. Starting with those astounding advantages, the writer and director proceed to turn fluid motion into mechanical clanking; movement into poses, emotion into cloying emotionalism. These actors must have hated it, as all the blending and folding became telegraphed shifts. This wasn't folded reality: it was quirky imagination. Julio Medem would have made this into a lifealtering experience for all concerned instead of Oscar Wilde lite. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Johnny Depp takes us by the hand and in the gentlest most reassuring way leads into the heart, soul and mind of an artist. How easy is for the world to judge. How frightened we still are of all we don't understand. The very nature of innocence is suspect because innocence belongs exclusively to the innocent. Every time the world claims to protect it, tends to destroy it. "Finding Nerverland" is filled with moments of enlightenment. Moving and powerful moments but none more so than Julie Christie's face as she applauds, converted to the fantasy transported into her daughter's house. The moment and the enlightenment are short lived, but, somehow, remains in my mind as a glimmer of hope. If for a moment she accepts the mystery of it all, maybe we all could. Johnny Depp is the best American actor of his generation, period. Kate Winslet is a stunning rarity among her contemporaries. She doesn't look like anybody else and the camera catches every tiny little thought that crosses her marvelous face. Congratulations Mr. Forster you can count on me from this moment on as a devoted fan.

I had heard that this was merely a "chick flick." Hey, my wife is the one who wanted to go see it. As it turned out, I went with three other guys, and we all loved it. Some movies entertain; some teach; some open up new worlds. This movie opened up new worlds. With each passing scene, carefully woven from the previous ones, it was like crossing yet another threshold into another world. The story unfolded deeper and deeper with each new scene, each layer adding not to complexity (the story is rather simple), but to the depth. Depp and the others (esp. the young actor who played Peter) easily lead the audience deeper and deeper into the paths of authenticity, healing, love, friendship and the triumph of inner strength. The other characters, likewise, garnish the central story excellently. The only flaw I saw is, I'm sure, a matter of taste and perspective; I felt the grandmother was simply too two-dimensional and not as believable as she should have been, though she, too, had some beautiful moments that truly added to the film. Having much experience with divorce (being a divorce attorney) I found the unfortunate relationship between Depp's character and his wife believable to a tee: two people deeply in love with each other yet more committed to personal pursuits than tending the difficult relationship we call marriage. Ironically, though Depp's character ultimately became the main caretaker of the four boys, by following the tender feelings of his heart, he allowed his marriage to evaporate by not following the other tender feelings of his heart. Nearly perfect. I give it a 9 out of 10.