pretty underwhelming, especially given the hype

Rating: 6/10 (27 March 2005)

I cannot imagine what all the shouting is about. "Finding Neverland" is poorly shot, badly edited, emotionally limp and dramatically empty. Much like what I remember of the director's previous effort, "Monster's Ball."
Let's take these complaints in order:
1. Poorly shot. What the HELL was up with that swirling camera action at the end of the first public performance of "Peter Pan"? Seems to me the director didn't know how to capture or convey the supreme emotion that the theatre audience (and by extension, the movie's audience) were supposed to be feeling, so he decided to give us all vertigo with an effect even less subtle than something Andrew Lloyd Webber might have dreamt up. Come to think of it, I bet most of the people who were "blown away" by this flick think A.L.W. is some sort of genius, and plan to own a copy of "The Phantom of the Opera (2004)" when it comes out on DVD... The scenes in the Imaginary Circus, where JM Barrie is dancing with the dog/bear, are straight out of another poorly shot attempt at fantasy: Moulin Rouge. Wild and swirling cameras with monstrously leering extras might frighten the little ones, but it doesn't engage anyone over the age of four.
2. Badly edited. I don't blame the editor so much in this area, as the director probably gave him crap to work with. One particular example that springs to mind: JM Barrie is writing in his journal after teaching the boys to fly a kite. Little boy Peter approaches him to talk. The initial frame is an interesting low-angle and canted shot of the boy's approach up the hill. As soon as he reaches Barrie's feet, there's a cut to a boring medium close-up of the boy speaking to Barrie. There's no reason to switch from the two-shot to the medium close-up, except that perhaps the director couldn't get consistent performances from his cast of youngsters (a difficult task for any director, certainly, but if you're not up to it, don't attempt a movie like this one, n'est-pa?). There are numerous shots during the scenes in the park where Barrie is entertaining the boys with the dog where the frame leaps from one side of Barrie to another, and back. This causes a serious dislocation in space for the viewer who needs to know where the characters are in relation to one-another to make sense of the action. Call me a film-school drop-out geek for complaining about this, but it's a serious problem with the shooting and editing in this film. Later, after Barrie has invited Sylvia and her kids to stay at his wife's cottage (and we never really explore how dense Barrie must be to not see that his wife would have a problem with this, today or especially in Edwardian England), there's a scene where Sylvia and Barrie are talking. Rather than answer her directly, Barrie suggests they go outside to look around... This moment might have been played for some sexual tension between the two, with Barrie defusing it by leading her out-of-doors where they're not alone. Instead, we cut away immediately to Barrie, dressed as a pirate, stalking one of the boys in the woods. Huh? What happened to the scene that should have followed? Oh, it's not about depth, it's about whimsy. That Barrie, what a whimsical character!
3. Emotionally Limp. Yep, limp. This arises out of my fourth complaint, so let's tackle it here,too:
4. Dramatically Empty. Are we at all surprised that Sylvia is going to die? Is there any drama to Sylvia's coughing fit (excepting that it happens at the worst possible moment for Young Peter's artistic expression. How convenient.)? Are we at all surprised when she dies of her mysterious ailment? (Incidentally, according to some research, she died of cancer. Not mentioned in the film, and I can't imagine why not.) Oh! and what of the 25 seats in theatre! Brilliant of Barrie to execute that trick of placing children amongst the adults, if it really happened. But as a dramatic element in the movie, it fails to add up to anything. Are the seats gonna be filled? Will Barrie pull it off? Will the producer (Dustin Hoffman) fail to trust Barrie and try to sell the seats right at show time? If you were surprised by the outcome, you've never seen another movie in your life. The movie also conveniently alters history to avoid further drama: The only potential source of conflict to Barrie's idyllic life with Sylvia and the boys is Sylvia's Mother (Julie Christie). Again, according to some quick google-research, Sylvia's husband was alive when Barrie met Sylvia and the boys, and resented his interference with their domestic life. That, combined with Sylvia's mother, and multiplied by Barrie's wife's concerns about his relationship with Sylvia and the boys would have easily upped the dramatic stakes here. But neither the screenwriter nor the playwright before him chose to gamble with such a sticky area: Barrie might come across as an early-century Michael Jackson (let's not get into his Never Never Land connections), and that wouldn't make for a light-hearted, tear-jerking, fantastical movie, now, would it?
P.S. you might wonder after all that why I would still give the movie 6 stars. I thought the art direction and visual tone of the movie were excellent (watch the DVD's extras to see how the camera original footage was graded to give it more dense and somber tones). I thought the acting, for what they had to work with, was pretty good.