"Finding Neverland"

"Finding Neverland"

Directed by: Marc Forster

Starring: Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie and Dustin Hoffman

Rated: PG (childhood trauma dealing with a parent’s death)

Running time: 107 minutes

Best suited for: Depp fans, dreamers and wonderers, families (with kids over 11 or 12). Despite its thematic "Peter Pan" element, younger children will likely be bored, then traumatized.

Least suited for: realists and the cold of heart

Acorn’s Rating Guide:

4-1/2 acorns

Better late, sometimes, than never. For those of you who haven’t yet seen the film, I wanted to include this review before the Academy Awards broadcast on Sunday. I believe "Finding Neverland" to be this year’s most deserving Best Picture nominee. (Yes, it’s even better than "Sideways.") Sadly, neither film seems to have a snowball’s chance of winning. But "Finding Neverland" is still showing in local theaters. If you can remember the magic of childhood, I highly recommend it.

The film is a kind of marvelous offspring of "Big Fish" (stylistically speaking) and "Shakespeare in Love" (a play within a play). It is part love story, part Edwardian period piece, part primer about growing up and growing old—and above all a mythical fable about the wonderful fantasy of youth.

It speaks with quiet dignity, yet also manages to rivet an audience; it’s a sad film that also proves magnificently uplifting. Director Marc Forster steers clear of the stereotypically maudlin (the trouble I encountered with "Million Dollar Baby"), and while the film is admittedly a "two-hanky weeper," I felt not the least bit cheated or manipulated into baring my emotions. "Finding Neverland" is visually and emotionally stunning and wonderfully told.

Johnny Depp nicely inhabits the Scottish playwright James M. Barrie. It takes a real cynic to twist the portrayed friendship between Barrie and the widow Silvia Davies (Kate Winslet). Even with Barrie’s chilly, seemingly loveless marriage to his wife (Radha Mitchell), the film hints of nothing but a mutual esteem between Barrie and Mrs. Davies. And if Barrie’s interest in the four Davies’ children was even remotely inappropriate (as whispered rumors spread among British elitists), there is no indication of indiscretion in "Finding Neverland." The film’s pervasive innocence floats far above the seas of innuendo.

To a large extent, "Finding Neverland" is an ingenious look into the creative mind at work. Barrie was a conduit of wit and whimsy. While his "playtime" with the Davies’ boys might have appeared benign to some adults and perhaps gauche to others, Barrie was all the while a playwright hard at work. By internalizing the sadness of a little boy named Peter, observing a grandmother’s stern grumblings and imagining a magical place that Barrie knew to exist in the minds of all children, he concocted the surprise theatrical hit of London in 1904. "Peter Pan" is arguably the first modern "children’s play."

Johnny Depp is well deserving of his second Best Actor nomination in two years, perhaps finally, belatedly establishing himself as one of this generation’s most gifted actors. In "Finding Neverland" he exudes a touching innocence, a quiet and dignified sorrow that touched both Barrie’s professional and personal lives. With films like "Edward Scissorhands," "Pirates of the Caribbean" and now "Finding Neverland," Johnny Depp may indeed have been the perfect actor to re-create the essence of J. M. Barrie’s innocence.

Indeed, when Barrie introduces the young Peter Davies to theatergoers as the real "Peter Pan," the boy looks at Barrie and replies, "No, he is." Truer words, it seems, were never spoken.

In a nutshell: "Finding Neverland" smartly and warmly tells the tale of the creative birth of "Peter Pan." Told with both soulful compassion and endearing humor, "Finding Neverland" is an enchantment that should delight those of us who truly believe that, as the years slip by, numbers lie—that never growing up has advantages at any age.