Not a bad tearjerker, but not great either

Rating: 7/10 (26 August 2005)

Yes, I blubbed at the end of Finding Neverland. It played the minor chords on my heartstrings effectively enough, but the film suffers from a slight lack of momentum, largely because of the performances of Johnny Depp and Dustin Hoffman.
Hoffman, a dandyish figure with a mid-Atlantic accent, is a puzzling comic-relief character whose screen presence is distracting rather than engaging. I found myself thinking, whenever he appeared, "It's Dustin Hoffman! What's he doing here? And is he supposed to be American or British?" To be fair to Hoffman, it is possible that his accent was a perfect rendition of what Americans sounded like in J. M. Barrie's time, but he never seems comfortable in the role.
And Depp is just a bit wooden. Again, perhaps he is meant to be restrained - the film is set in Victorian Britain after all. But Depp's soft Scottish tones and phlegmatic response to any event, no matter how dramatic, makes the film a little flat. If someone had run in and shouted "Run for your lives, the house is on fire" you feel that Depp would have looked pensive and cooed "Ooh, dear. We'll have to put it out, then." It doesn't help that the central drama - a main character's disease - is telegraphed so far in advance that you can't believe it is a surprise to anyone when it makes its grand entrance. Still, Kate Winslet is excellent as ever in her English rose role and the children are very good indeed.
If you are fond of a weepie, Finding Neverland will not let you down. But compared to other films ranked in the Internet Movie Database's top 250 it is decidedly weak.