Overall Rating
 Awesome: 38.71%
Worth A Look: 36.02%
Average: 13.98%
Pretty Bad: 4.84%
Total Crap: 6.45%
14 reviews, 102 user ratings
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| Finding Neverland |
by Beth Gilligan
"Extols the power of imagination without letting the audience use their own."
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While it's nice to see Johnny Depp getting some mainstream attention, one wishes he would seek roles more befitting his talent.Upon close examination, the life of Scottish author and playwright J.M. Barrie doesn’t exactly scream out to be made into a Hollywood movie starring Johnny Depp. For starters, the real-life Barrie was hardly a feast for the eyes, and although he was responsible for one of the most famous stories in children’s literature (Peter Pan), his fondness for spending time with young boys doesn’t play especially well in this era of Internet pedophiles and, well, Michael Jackson (whose ranch is indeed called Neverland). Given this source material, Finding Neverland’s aggressive innocence may come as a bit of a shock. The early 20th century England evoked by the film’s director, Marc Forster, is one of sunny weather, lazy days in the park, lovable sheepdogs, and houses in the country. In short, it seems like something out of a children’s storybook.
While this may set up Finding Neverland with all the trappings of a fine fantasy film, it comes up short in one crucial respect: the power of imagination, while paid lip service to by the main characters, is given the short shrift throughout the movie itself. Peter Pan, like all the great children’s stories, transports the reader (or, more likely, the viewer of the Disney animated film) to another world, where pirates and Indians roam, children can fly, and all sorts of mystical creatures abound.
Forster, however, is not content to let the viewers of his film fill in the blanks themselves; rather than leave it to them to imagine the ideas floating around Mr. Barrie’s head, he often transposes the “reality” of Barrie’s situation with a re-creation of a situation meant to convey the dream world the writer inhabits. For instance, instead of merely showing Barrie in his contemporary circumstance wearing an Indian headdress, the audience is also treated to a glimpse of him wandering around the Wild West.
The main focus of the movie is Barrie’s closeness to the four young boys from the Llewelyn-Davies family and their widowed mother, Sylvia (Kate Winslet). Barrie’s relationship with the entire clan was, by all accounts, a chaste one, but the movie offers few favors in explaining how the writer (then a largely unremarkable playwright) came to form such a tight bond with them.Although Finding Neverland is not without its touching scenes, largely thanks to the talent of the performers, it’s evocation of childhood is largely unconvincing (for superior recent examples, see I’m Not Scared or The Return), and its insistence on essentially dictating what the audience should be feeling rather than letting them form their own reactions results in a disappointing cinematic experience.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=10919&reviewer=379
originally posted: 12/01/04 02:54:28
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 Chicago Film Festival. For more in the 2004 Chicago Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 Mill Valley Film Festival. For more in the 2004 Mill Valley Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 Leeds Film Festival. For more in the 2004 Leeds Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 Palm Springs Film Festival. For more in the 2005 Palm Springs Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
12-Nov-2004 (PG)
DVD: 22-Mar-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
01-Jan-2005
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