If You Believe, Clap Your Hands...But Wait Until the Final Twenty Poignant Minutes

Rating: 6/10 (14 December 2005)

It's no wonder Michael Jackson is drawn to Peter Pan and the concept of Neverland from this 2004 romanticized telling of playwright James M. Barrie's attachment to the Llewelyn Davies family as the inspiration for his classic play. Director Marc Forster, whose only other credit I know is the melodramatic and overrated "Monster's Ball", draws fine performances from his cast, but the film itself is oddly uninvolving at least until the last twenty minutes. Forster, along with screenwriter David Magee, takes a rather reverential attitude toward their subject, and this beatific sense is heightened by the immaculate approach toward the production.
The result seems targeted squarely at the Merchant-Ivory connoisseur of good taste, but somewhere along the way, the edges have been dulled, and the intensity of feeling that Barrie has for the boys has been mollified for a broader audience. Fortunately, Johnny Depp has been ideally cast as Barrie mimicking a convincing Scottish accent in a surprisingly restrained performance. Even so, his unsullied playfulness comes through in his scenes with the children even if they tend to go on ad nauseam. Looking almost too radiant with an innate inability to convey fragility, Kate Winslet has the saintly role of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the sickly mother who lives selflessly for her boys while in self-denial about her undisclosed illness.
Even more thankless is the role of Barrie's social climbing wife Mary played in an overly pinched manner by Radha Mitchell (take a look at the outtakes to see a much livelier actress at work). Because her character is drawn in such shallow strokes, the unspoken love implied between Barrie and Sylvia seems all the more distracting from the main point of the story, the parallel between life and fantasy in Barrie's writing of "Peter Pan". Unbelievably nearly forty years since her enigmatic Lara in David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago", Julie Christie plays the predictable part of Sylvia's unyielding, Gladys Cooper-type mother with conviction, supposedly the inspiration for Captain Hook. I only wish her character was developed more to match her well-missed talent. In an even smaller role, Dustin Hoffman plays money-conscious impresario Charles Frohman with welcome panache.
All four boys are effortless though the standout is Freddie Highmore, who plays the pivotal role of third son Peter. He plaintively lends the gravity of a serious child recovering from his father's death and unwillingly in the throes of a man consumed with fantasy, especially poignant in the closing scene with Depp. The recreation of the original production of "Peter Pan" is done well, even the fanciful scenes toward the end. I also think credit is due to composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, who provides an ethereal and evocative musical score.
The DVD has the standard set of extras. Forster, Magee and producer Richard Gladstein - though sadly none of the actors - provide informative commentary on an alternate audio track. There are three deleted scenes and about five minutes worth of outtakes which frankly could have blessedly goosed the pacing of the film. Of course, there is the expected making-of featurette, "The Magic of Finding Neverland" but also a quick film on the film's special effects which could have been much longer and a stars-on-the-red-carpet clip that is completely disposable.