A Deceptively-Good Movie, Better Than What First Meets The Eye

Rating: 10/10 (16 April 2006)

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.