Movie Review: Finding Neverland

Finding Neverland: Torgo approves

This was our second consecutive night watching a great actor play an author writing his major work. This movie has Johnny Depp as JM Barrie, author of Peter Pan. He has to pull off a Scottish accent, and I think he does it fairly well. A note on accents: I'm always interested in which regional inflection British actors choose when trying American roles. I'm also impressed when an actor, like Depp here, is able to do an accent not his own in a movie with actors who don't also have that accent. Here, mostly everyone else is English, but Depp sticks with the Scottish throughout the movie.

There's a very interesting article here from the New Yorker, which discusses the true story of Barrie and defends the film. If you've seen the movie, I recommend reading it.

Whereas Capote felt too condensed, Finding Neverland condenses far longer of a time period, cutting major characters, and feels much smoother. Most notably, Kate Winslet's character is Sylvia Llewellyn Davies, a widow in the movie. But in real life, her husband was alive until several years after Peter Pan debuted. But they needed to simplify things and I think it works (they also lopped off one of her five boys).

Dustin Hoffman has a small role, but is, again, terrific. In the extras, he fawns over Depp, calling him one of the greatest actors of Depp's generation. I agree. I also think it's notable how many roles Depp has played where it's difficult to imagine anyone else being as effective. Here, he has to be a 40-something man with a child's heart, but still very much an adult. That's much like Willy Wonka, where Gene Wilder was brilliant before him, but if Gene Wilder hadn't played the role, I think Depp would have defined it. There's also Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Hunter Thompson (in Fear & Loathing), and his Pirates role. I also thought he was excellent in Dead Man, a movie not enough people have seen.

(He's been fine in mediocre movies, too, like Ninth Gate, Cry-Baby and Sleepy Hollow.)

Back to this movie, Depp carries it, as he needs to, but aside from Dustin Hoffman, most of the other actors are quite good. The children, 4 boys, are all good. Barrie's wife, played by Radha Mitchell, gives a strong performance as well.

Menu Page Note: Something I've been noticing lately is how dvd's now often have little clips or specially-produced collages that lead into the menu screen. With X-Men 3, it was an annoying animation bit that just meant it took that much longer to navigate the menu. With Capote, it was a scene of the killings of the Clutter family. That bugged me, because while it happens before the movie starts, that scene isn't shown until the very end. So I spent the whole movie waiting for them to show it. With Finding Neverland, the opening includes Barrie dancing with his dog, then transforming into him dancing with a bear. This led M-N to expect that it would be a far weirder movie than it was. But fortunately, that scene is very close to the beginning, so we weren't left waiting for the point in the movie when it gets crazy.

My opinion is that dvd's don't need these tedious teasers, but if they must have them, don't pull a Capote and show a clip from the end, and definitely don't pull an X-Men 3 and just make us wait so we can hit play (and then it's more annoying when trying to navigate to other features).

One final note on this topic, I have the Simpsons season 4 box set (one of their best seasons, I think), and as you hit select on each episode, or each feature, a little animation plays. It's cute at first, but then you realize there are only about 5 or 6 different animations, and you have to endure them each time you select anything.