A Strong Follow-Up from the Director of the Overrated Monster's Ball

Finding Neverland feels like a superior episode of Masterpiece Theater or a first-rate A&E production. That is not to belittle the movie, but simply to explain how modestly scaled this fine film is. Marc Forster has fashioned a film that very well could have been titled Barrie in Love, except that the film has more poignant moments of loss and grief than one might expect. Those sequences and moments are balanced perfectly by the flights of fancy Barrie shares with the boys in the film. These moments more often than not flow naturally out of realistic moments the film depicts - the boys start flying while Barrie watches them jumping on their beds. The single best shot in the film involves Barrie and his wife (who he becomes more and more emotionally estranged from as the film goes along) entering their individual bedrooms after a fight with each other. The shot is of their backs as they open different doors. Inside her room everything is exactly as one might expect, but inside Barrie's room is a bright blue sky. This simple image goes a long way towards showing how far apart these two are from each other. However, the wife is given her full due as a character. She starts off unlikable, which may be the only unfair ploy in the script, but she is allowed enough scenes that show how her husband's dreamy fantasy world negatively affects her. Forster does something interesting with this film, he manages to make a tearjerker that is not at all melodramatic. The actors emotions are reigned in - befitting the film's time period - and this allows all of the characters to remain human even when they are on spectacular pretend adventures. Johnny Depp is a fabulous actor who has often earned his best reviews for playing over the top characters (Captain Jack Sparrow, Hunter S. Thompson, Ed Wood) but in Finding Neverland he shows he can be just engaging in a more reserved mode. The only disturbing element of the film is that, as I understand it, it whitewashes the probable truth. From what I've been able to discern, it appears that the real Barrie was likely a pedophile. While that should not bother anyone's enjoyment of the film, I am concerned that in say one-hundred years somebody may make the same type of film, with the exact same title, about Michael Jackson. But that unnecessary concern aside, Finding Neverland, is a modest, well-acted film that is equally enchanting and sad, as well as magical and earthbound - giving those in the mood an opportunity for a cleansing cry.