Sweets to the sweet

Rating: 7/10 (26 December 2006)

Over all this movie (Finding Neverland) is able to plod along slowly and carefully tell the main story of the Life of JM Barrie with all the ins and outs of how he developed the idea for the Peter Pan story.
I found this movie (and the music) slow and too saccharine and thought it lacked some sort of vigor that I have come to expect from Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet's movies.
Altho I really loved Kate Winslet's acting in this movie but I felt she was held back by the director and the script. Depp's acting was rather stilted and reserved for the whole film also. But I guess that was the director's choice- to give a stilted portrayal of the way snobby middle-class people were in Scotland (and all over) in those days. Now Scotish football fans are loud & vocal about their sport. So at least some things have changed.
Overall, the children were wonderful but I found the boy Peter (Freddie Highmore) was dull and uninspiring and I found close-ups of his eyes that looked like pudgy blobs disquietingly flaccid. The other boys were lively but not seen enough of.
In real-life, (as in the movie too) the Kate Winslet character (Sylvia) gets sick and Barrie (1860-1937) puts his hand up for the Guardianship of the Davies children. Later in life, Michael drowned at 21. The boy Peter grew up but he committed suicide in 1960. Barrie wrote the wonderful plays 'Quality Street' and 'The Admirable Crichton', which were great successes.
This movie was much better than the JM Barrie story with Robin Williams (Hook 1991) which was over done and too long. The way this film showed the 'fantasy' scenes of Tinkerbell and the Pirate Gang were done SO well that I hope they decide to make a full length movie in this style and really bring Barrie's dreams to life.