Finding Neverland

Finding Neverland (Director: Marc Forster)

FINDING NEVERLAND is the 2004 Oscar winner for Best Original Score (Jan A.P. Kaczmarek)

Director Forster hit it big with 2001's Monster's Ball. That's essentially his only big credit. This film is slated for a limited November 12 release and wide on November 24.

You ever watch a movie where nothing is bad at all, yet there's not a lot of great either? After watching this film on the life of J.M. Barrie, the playwright who wrote Peter Pan, I've been struggling to bring up moments I truly will treasure. I'll start with performances, since that is the singular outstanding part of the movie.

Johnny Depp can do no wrong. The man can play someone like Ed Wood, a wild comic performance and then another wild comic performance that is completely different with Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, and yet another completely different wild comic performance in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or how about his troubled undercover cop in Donnie Brasco or his troubled soul in Edward Scissorhands? In this, Depp shows a more "normal" character, but he's so infinitely watchable--sporting a perfect Irish accent, playing a man with a broad imagination, and completely likeable. Depp has been getting more Oscar buzz for this performance, and deservedly so.

How about the always-good Kate Winslet? Playing the sick and dying Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, mother of the boys who inspire Peter Pan, she's got a grace and an unwhiny way about her that engrosses.

Julie Christie, a legend, and I would almost guarantee she'll get nominated for her performance as Davies' mother.

Let me also point out the kid who plays Peter Llewelyn Davies, the first name of whom gets attached to Barrie's archetypal character, Freddie Highmore, so impressive that Depp recommended him to Tim Burton to play Charlie Bucket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Most of the time, kid actors can get on your nerves. Highmore is excellent; a source of dramatic pull.

Dustin Hoffman is in this, too. After playing Captain Hook in Spielberg's Hook, this is kind of funny casting, as theatre owner Charles Frohman. Not much is given to him, but he's good.

Does it sound like I'm gushing about the movie, now? The movie is almost like Shakespeare in Love without the overtone of humor. Once again, we have a writer who needs inspiration, he finds it, the outside world doesn't like it for whatever reason, art is made anyway, everyone loves it, the end. In other words, not exactly groundbreaking. Filled with those kind of inspirational lines about how imagination takes you so far, and do what you feel and it all comes out beautiful--not exactly a bad choice of philosophy, but it all seems like I've heard it before.

The movie is worth watching for the professionalism involved, but I certainly needed more to call it a classic. Ironically, this feels like last year's Peter Pan adaptation. Nothing wrong, but I want magic. There are specific scenes in Finding Neverland where they go for the magic, but they are really too few, and dampened by the outside forces that bring the conflict.