Finding Neverland
Director: Marc Forster
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 1.5
J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp), after one of his plays flops, becomes friends with a widow (Kate Winslet) and her precocious kids and comes up with the pieces for his timeless creation, Peter Pan. Aside from being schmaltzy and manipulative, it also bears the distinct honor of being one of Hollywood's most psychologically unhealthy pictures of late - further, the character of Barrie is more or less a self-interested man-child who neglects his own wife to play make-believe with children that are not his own (this is viewed as 'acceptable,' according to the film, because his wife - played by Radha Mitchell - is shrill, stern and mature, and therefore 'disposable' to someone who lives in a perpetual dream world). Depp's very good (is that the Hunter S. Thompson cap he's wearing in the park?) as the lead, but the script is certainly second-rate.
