It manages some magical moments...

Rating: 6/10 (16 April 2006)

Preconceived for triumph and tragedy, "Finding Neverland" has a great idea but doesn't quite stay on track. The story of playwright James M. Barrie--and the building up to the opening-night stage performance of his "Peter Pan"--has exciting flourishes, but flourishes are what the film seems to be built upon, and the leftover dramatics are shallow. The opening scene (chronicling a Barrie-written flop) is painfully underwritten; we don't even get the name of the play being performed (and the audience is shown actually falling asleep in the theater!). Dustin Hoffman, as a producer, barely has a character to portray and we never know where he stands--is he a business partner? faithful friend? tireless worker? Johnny Depp stays in a low-key as Barrie and doesn't exhaust his handsomeness, but Kate Winslet's role as the mother of Barrie's muses gets stuck with a deadweight role: ill, she is less a character and more precisely a patient. Fast-forward to the play itself for the real Neverland; that's when the movie accumulates some substantial magic and takes flight. **1/2 from ****