An enjoyable film, but its sense of wonder undermines its status as a real and emotionally involving story

Rating: Null/10 (9 November 2004)

With yet another disappointing play under his belt, JM Barrie is understandably down, and a cold and distant relationship with his wife doesn't help simulate his creative juices. Writing in the local park as he does, Barrie meets widow Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies and her four sons. Enjoying his day with the children, Barrie gets to know Sylvia and become her friend; however the social circle that Barrie moves in looks down on such relationships and the whole thing further damages his marriage. However it is in his friendship and imaginative playing that Barrie finds his inspiration and begins writing what will turn out to be his most successful and memorable play.
On the basis of a five star review from Empire Magazine and the presence of the ever worth a risk Johnny Depp, I came to this film without a great love of Peter Pan or Barrie and it was more the appeal of the actor that drew me more than it was the man Barrie. Maybe it is for this reason that I enjoyed the film but was not totally won over by it in the same way as many other viewers seem to have been; maybe it is because I didn't approach the film filled with the sense of wonder that the film drops on us and, although I recognise how important it was to the film, I couldn't help feeling that it also took away from the reality of the story at the same time. The plot was interesting but I was more interested in the real side of the story that I was in the flights of imaginative fancy that it regularly heads off on. I enjoyed these scenes as well but they only had value beyond adding a sense of wonder to the film and to the story whereas I felt the film gave short change to the actual reality of the story  especially the scandal around Barrie and Sylvia's friendship and the decay of Barrie's marriage.
In a way is that the film wanted to be too full of wonder and shy away from the darker stuff that made it lose some of its impact and appeal to me. It seemed that either issues were simplified or they were simply resolved (or lessened) by Barrie's insistence that things could be solved by just going into your imagination and so on. However this does the alleged darker side of the story a disservice because, although we hear of the chatter of paedophilia (a claim the boys have always totally denied) the story tends to make things like Barrie's marriage break-up and so on easier to swallow by encouraging us to see his marriage as already at an end (and we are encourage to blame his wife) and also to look more to the wonder he brought that the harm that we know he was actually causing to the Llewelyn-Davies family. Of course to bring these out would have damaged the sense of wonder the rest of the film encourages us to buy into and would have made this a different and less sweet affair, but would have been more interesting to me.
If anything it wants to be too 'nice' and full of wonder  and real life is rarely that way or that morally simple.
Of course many people will not have come to this film for Barrie but for Depp and they will not be disappointed because, moral simplicity aside, Depp gives an assured performance the likes of which we have come to expect from him over the course of his career. The Scottish accent is pretty good although quite soft and therefore kept accessible to the American market. He does well with both the imagined stuff but also with the difficult emotional stuff  Depp managing to put in the complexity that really the script should have helped him with more. Winslet is OK but rather simplistic and too easily sweet and played in contrast with her mother and Barrie's wife. She is a good actress here but didn't have much to really work with. Therefore Christie and Mitchell are not as good as they should have been  certainly Mitchell was done a great disservice as the film simply had no time for her pain or longing to have been involved in her husband's world in the same way as Davies was. Highmore was impressive and he is the main person to keep the film in reality with his outburst of pain; he too falls in with the wonder by the end but at times his pain and confusion is very engaging and refreshingly convincing and real. Hoffman was a strange find but he is a welcome addition  his distinctive presence complimented by a handful of amusing lines that more than cover for the fact that he does seem a little out of place in turn of the century England! People like Ian Hart and Paul Whitehouse barely make an impression but it is nice to see them anyway.
Overall this is a good film but in a way the sense of wonder that many people have praised was also one of its weaknesses. Instead of being a real story that showed the complex emotions of the situation (even the simplified situation seen here) the film tends to err on the side of wonder and shirks away from the difficult issues that would have left the audience unsure whether to really root for Barrie or not and instead enjoys itself on its flights of fancy. It still have enough emotion and wonder to make it an enjoyable film that is worth seeing but I couldn't help feeling that it really was going for easy targets and avoiding things that would make things more difficult for both it and its audience.