Dedicated performances can't turn this one around

Rating: 3/10 (9 July 2005)

MINOR SPOILERS
Unfortunately, neither Johnny Depp's great talent nor the dedication of each and every actor and actress in this film prevent it from becoming sticky, sentimental, and slickly packaged. The one credit I'll give this film up front is that it tells the public that Barrie was not a pedophile. This is happy news for those of us who believe he wasn't. However, the film fails in three major ways, only one of which is related to historical accuracy. 1. Let's get the historical notes out of the way first. Certainly this film is not intended to be a biopic, and I think the film makers were fairly clear about this. That said, as any kind of portrayal of J. M. Barrie, the film certainly fails, for there are so many glaring inaccuracies in it that one really can't say it's about J. M. Barrie; it doesn't make sense to waste the space listing all of the reasons why. Pick up a copy of A. Birkin's biography of Barrie, "J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys," to see what I'm talking about. Birkin combines Barrie's notes, letters, and photographs with the correspondence and photographs of others, as well as with historical facts, to give a picture of who Barrie really was and how his relationships with the Davies family worked. It's a fascinating read.
2. Even if one moves beyond the historical faults of Finding Neverland, the film fails also as an exploration of what would compel an individual, particularly the main character of Finding Neverland, to create a work like Peter Pan. The problem, I think, is that the film portrays the Peter Pan story as a jolly little tale by a jolly little man. I'll agree with a healthy amount of literary criticism here: My own reading of the Peter Pan play, novel, prequel (Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens), and Barrie's early movie treatment reveal to me a story that is tremendously entertaining but also tremendously terrifying.
Barrie's "terrifying masterpiece," as Peter Davies so well termed it, is permeated with anxiety. Most people recognize its well-known anxiety about growing up, but you don't have to peel back many layers of the play or novel to see conflicts between the Victorian ideal of the virtuous Mother and the fact that mothers have sex to become mothers. Both the play and novel also express anxiety about gender and gender roles, sexuality, unfulfilled desire, abandonment, death, and confusion over self-identity.
So it's difficult to believe that the playful, dapper man that the screenplay and Depp give us, despite the difficulties in his life, could create a work as troubling as Peter Pan. In fact, that sort of man didn't create Peter Pan. The man who created Peter Pan was extraordinarily imaginative but also conflicted, anxious, and really quite grim. He was a man who wanted not only to be a boy but even more so to be a mother of boys. This isn't very palatable to the movie-going public, but it's a more credible personality for the creator of Peter Pan.
Because the film simplifies both the Peter Pan play and Barrie himself, it doesn't create a believable picture of what type of person could create Peter Pan.
3. Thus, the best way to take this film is as an exploration of the creative process. In this respect the film draws some decent connections between its "Barrie," his life, and his work. Thus my three stars. However, the script is so contrived, so formulated to draw tears and laughs from the audience, that it either distracts one from, or lessens the impact of, this exploration. And because the film contains so many inaccuracies, we can't get the clearer, and more colorful, picture of how Barrie took the events and people from his life to create Peter Pan.
Ironically, if this film had stuck to history, or had at least given its "Barrie" and his creation more complexity, the resulting story would have been much more poignant without the need for a formulated script. The historical Barrie's involvement with Mr. and Mrs. Davies and their children is a powerful, moving, and often very sad tale of love, loss, conflict, and creation. It's lamentable that this film couldn't keep pace with the true story.