Rigging The Ballot Box

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2006)

A naked attempt at having it both ways: Oscar contention, and the commercial need to fill the seats with a child audience (bulldozed into this narrative).
Huge disappointment because of the lack of imagination. No exploitation of the times, the Edwardian architecture.
Neverland itself is visually imagined no more deeply than a play, as stage sets, right down to the undulating cardboard cutouts that make up the "sea".
This couples with the narrative hypocrisy: Peter Pan is all about NOT growing up, and yet this entire story is crushed by the baggage about growing up: Depp in his relationship to his wife, the eldest boy in relation to the grandmother, young Peter in relation to the world.
Depp is on target, Winslet is miscast, Hoffman is his usual nattering self...his own turn at Hook was better, a scary concept.