Beautiful ...and total fiction

Rating: 8/10 (25 March 2005)

Finding Neverland -- beautiful. Sentimental. And mostly fiction, since the real story of JM Barrie and the Llewellyn-Davies boys was quite sad -- actually, the movie is almost total fiction, since the boys' father is already dead in the movie when JM Barrie comes along (not), and the mother is kinda in love with Barrie (which she wasn't), the grandmother was already long dead but plays a key role in the film ...the mother leaves it in her will that Barrie is to care for the boys, when in fact Barrie forged her will, striking out the nurse Jenny and changing it to his name, "Jimmy" ...and it's also sad because the movie doesn't tell you what happened to most of the boys years later: one died in WW1, one committed suicide in a drowning pact with his gay lover at Oxford, Peter was stunned to be cut out of Barrie's will and became an embittered alcoholic who threw himself under a train in 1960 ... and no mention of the girl who inspired "Wendy", who died at the age of 6.