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  | Finding Neverland (Widescreen Edition)
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Average user rating:  | |
 I just couldn't help viewing this film through modern eyes | |
| This 2004 film is about the writer of the beloved tale of Peter Pan. Johnny Depp is cast in the lead role of Sir James Barrie, a married London playwright whose career is failing. However, when he meets a young widow, played by Kate Winslet, and her four young boys, he becomes a friend of that family, much to the displeasure of his own wife as well as the widow's mother, played by Julie Christie. These are fine roles for all of them. And the story held my interest. However, even though the film is set in 1903, I couldn't help viewing it through modern eyes. And basically, I feel repugnance for a man who just can't grow up, loves to play with children as if he is one of them, and finds his greatest happiness when he is doing just that. Even the name "Neverland" is a turn-off for me.
Personal views aside though, I did enjoy the costumes and sets of the period. I also thought the performances were excellent. That's why I give this film a mild recommendation. | |
 One of the most beautiful movies ever | |
| This movie made me want to read Peter Pan and see every feature film based on his story. Suddenly you see films like "New Adventures in Neverland" by Disney or "Hook" with Robin Williams in a brand new light. I like the fact that this movie is not a mere biographical portrait of J.M.Barrie. It makes the author part of Peter Pan's world and thus links our real world with Neverland.
Certainly, you cannot expect to learn facts and figures about 19th century literature or Barrie's personal relations, but you'll find a new aspect of your own world which makes this movie absolutely worth watching. It's a must. Honestly. "Finding Neverland", "Lost in Translation", and "The Girl With the Pearl Earring" are all some sort of quiet yet beautiful works which I regard more like a painting than like a plot-based story. One more thing: Johnny Depp makes a great perfomance and leaves enough room for a little English boy whose wet eyes will eventually make you sad and probably even cry. | |
| Shows the power of the human imagination ... | |
| This movie seems like a film that Hollywood is increasingly unable or unwilling to make, or at least unable to make well. Consider the following two facts about Finding Neverland: (a) there is virtually no profanity or sex and (b) it features a protagonist who is able to have a platonic, mature relationship with a woman who is not his wife, a relationship that he partakes in solely for the good of the woman and her family. But I think I liked the film mostly because it deals with one of my favorite topics: the human imagination. Some movies (Star Wars, etc.) are exercises in the human imagination, but don't really delve into how the exercise of imagination can affect normal everyday life. There is a tendency in some people to discount "escapist" cinema as being less worthy of artistic or cultural merit than movies that deal with "real" subjects. But as this movie shows, the fantastic can influence the real world in meaningful ways, and vice versa. It is the relationship with the widow's four sons that provided the impetus for J. M. Barrie to write his classic "Peter Pan" stageplay, and in Barrie's overactive imagination the boys found the strengh to deal with very real tragedies that had befallen their young lives. As C. S. Lewis (a writer of the fantastic whose relationship with another woman's sons is strangely similar to Barrie's) once commented, the only people who object to escapism are jailers. | |
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