Mark Forster/USA/2004; R4
Roadshow, NZ$34.95 | Reviewed by Alexander Bisley

THE TALK on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, publicity-hungry studio encouraged no doubt, is that Johnny Depp channels Michael Jackson (You could argue Jacko channeled Willy Wonka). The last excellent, unsettling performance from the fantastic Mr. Depp – in Finding Neverland – also features a man whose behaviour around children aroused suspicion. "A grown man playing with children all day long!" complains Sylvia Davies' mother when one Sir James M. Barrie starts spending serious time with the family. The celebrated playwright (Peter Pan) received his fair share of critics when he befriends the Davies children – Peter (Freddie Highmore), most notably – and their mother Sylvia (Kate Winslet), the inspiration for his childhood classic.

It's amusing to look at the conservative reaction to the film. (Hillary Clinton rhapsodises it in on the DVD extras.) Take Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and MC of the Christian Oscars. Baehr diagnosed the morality of this year's best picture nominees: Million Dollar Baby and Sideways were "abhorrent", The Aviator snared "Extreme Caution", and it seems that Ray was too outrageous for Baehr to mention. Finding Neverland "has hardly any objectionable content; it is filled with positive, moral attitudes that encourage a hopeful outlook in place of depression and defeat."

This lightly fictionalised account of the Barrie/Davies story has strengths. Mackenzie Crook has a cameo as an obsequious usher (quelle intertextuality with his scuzzy pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean!, JD's bizarro breakthrough.) Barrie/Depp does cool-quirky stuff like turn up unannounced chez Davies in Indian headdress with a quacking toy duck, which angers Sylvia's mother yet again. Ideas about innocence, imagination, mortality, and inexorably moving on from something special that will never be again are interesting, albeit they could really have been developed further and more imaginatively.


Finding Neverland is slap-up spiffy stylistically and, complementing Depp, features fine performances from the talented Winslet-Highmore duo. They don't quite transcend their material's middlebrow, unadventerous Oscar bait: In contrast to real life's messiness, the film has too much bland smoothness, in content and in style. Finding Neverland is more absorbing than moving; the true story, like the play, is darker, dodgier, more complex and compelling.