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Finding Neverland Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for mild thematic elements and brief language) Theater release: November 24, 2004 by Miramax Films Directed by: Marc Forster Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes Cast: Johnny Depp (J.M. Barrie), Kate Winslet (Sylvia Llewelyn Davies), Julie Christie (Mrs. Emma du Maurier), Radha Mitchell (Mary Barrie), Dustin Hoffman (Charles Frohman), Freddie Highmore (Peter) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Is there an actor today as delightfully diverse and eccentric with his roles as Johnny Depp? In the last two years alone, he's memorably offered us the charming Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean), oddball CIA agent Sands (Once Upon a Time in Mexico), and tormented novelist Mort Rainey (Secret Window). And in 2005, he'll re-team with director Tim Burton for what will surely be a typically whimsical performance as Willy Wonka in a new adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Depp portrays yet another eccentric in Finding Neverland, though it's also his most well-adjusted character in years. Celebrated Scottish author and playwright J.M. Barrie is best known as the man who wrote Peter Pan, which was in a sense the Harry Potter of the early 1900s. But there's also an emotional and heartfelt tale underlying the creation of this beloved children's play and book. Directed by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball), Finding Neverland is "inspired by true events" and based upon Allan Knee's play The Man That Was Peter Pan, which in turn was inspired by Andrew Birkin's book J.M. Barrie & the Lost Boys. The film was pushed back from late last year to avoid colliding with Universal's 2003 remake of Peter Pan. Miramax's insistence on releasing this in the final two months of the year indicates their high Oscar hopes.

Johnny Depp as 'Peter Pan' creator J.M. Barrie

We begin in 1903 at the Duke of York's Theatre in London for the premiere of Little Mary, which puts the audience to sleep and proves a flop for Barrie and his producer, Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman, who also played Captain Hook in Steven Spielberg's Hook). The playwright nervously watches his work from the wings of the auditorium, though it's not as if his livelihood completely depends on it. He and his aristocratic wife Mary (Radha Mitchell, Man on Fire) live in a high society townhouse in London. Barrie's concerns reflect an artist who longs to connect with the hearts of his audience, yet finds himself without spirit or inspiration in both his work and his marriage.

While taking one of his daily walks with his dog and working on his journal in the park, the disheartened writer encounters the Llewelyn Davies family: widow Sylvia (a luminous Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) with her four boys George, Jack, Michael, and of course, Peter. They quickly form a friendship by playfully appealing to their sense of imagination and childish wonder-all except Peter (Freddie Highmore), the skeptic of the bunch. Will Barrie win a place in the reluctant boy's heart? Do fairies fly?

And so we joyfully learn how two sets of suffering souls find comfort in each other. After losing their dad to cancer, the boys gain a playful and willing father figure with "Uncle Jim." In turn, the childless Barrie finds the sons he never had while also rediscovering the power of imagination, which of course fuels the creativity to write his greatest work. With Sylvia, he discovers a kindred spirit who also wishes life weren't so uptight among London's upper class, and someone who can relate to the loss of a loved one from Barrie's youth.

Ah, but what would the neighbors say? Indeed, murmurs of adultery and pedophilia quietly circulate among the social circles, placing more stress on Barrie's already strained relationship with his wife-as depicted in the film, the two slept in separate rooms even before the Llewelyn Davies family entered the picture. Nor does Sylvia's mother Emma (Troy's Julie Christie) approve of her grandsons parading around like pirates and Indians, or her daughter inadvertently creating the impression that she is no longer looking for a new husband.

Kate Winslet and Johnny Depp

Some literary experts claim that Barrie was in fact guilty of some indiscretions, but Finding Neverland never gives the impression that he was less than honorable in his intentions. It's the portrait of a man who genuinely cared for his neighbors as if they really were his family, and it's sad how society even today can assume the worst in random acts of kindness. Yet can society really be blamed for thinking it inappropriate for a married man to spend so much time with another woman and her family at their country home?

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