A trip to a wonderful place where even the adults can never grow old.

Rating: 8/10 (9 November 2016)

Johnny Depp went from playing a pirate to playing a writer who wrote about pirates, and ironically, he ends up playing against Dustin Hoffman who once played the pirate in the story his story wrote about. Depp is James M. Barrie, the British playwright who introduced the world to Peter Pan. He's married to a very beautiful but distant woman, and along the way, cures his off stage unhappiness by befriending beautiful widow Kate Winslet and her four boys. Becoming their "uncle", Depp takes them onto a magical journey to a wonderful land where boys never grow up and adventure awaits around every culture.
This is indeed a magical movie, and it recently had a lengthy run as an equally magical musical. The movie features the legendary Julie Christie as Winslet's domineering mother, a woman of contradictions who certainly needs some magic of her own to lessen her inhibitions that are well meaning and understandable, not just some aging harridan who is unreasonably sour. It's a magical trip back in time too, giving a glimpse into a story re- told many times and reformatted in several different ways. Depp is fantastic in this, a film and musical I could watch or listen to over and over and never, never grow old from the magic it gives each time.