Finding Neverland | Julie Christie, Johnny Depp

Finding Neverland | Julie Christie, Johnny Depp | Welcome to Blu-Ray

DVDs:

Finding Neverland

	Finding Neverland Julie Christie, Johnny Depp Miramax, 2005 average customer review:based on 357 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Scottish playwright meets a recently widowed mother and her four sons in the park; the friendship with the children inspires the playwright while the relationship with the mother strains his marraige.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 13-DEC-2005
Media Type: DVD

Tough Love....

2004's "Finding Neverland" is a gentle dramatization of the playwright James Barrie's relationship with a widow and her four young sons, out of which will be born the timeless classic story of Peter Pan. The movie successfully walks a challenging tightrope between comedy and tragedy, as childhood clashes with adult realities.

Johnny Depp is pitch-perfect as James M. Barrie, a imaginative Scottish writer with a failed play and an unraveling marriage on his hands. Walking his dog in a London Park, he encounters the four adventurous children of recently widowed Sylvia Llewlyn Davies (Kate Winslet). His efforts to entertain the children are gratefully welcomed by an overstretched Sylvia. Putting on fantasy games involving dancing bears, pirates and indians for the boys seems to recharge Barrie's own creative batteries.

Barrie spends increasing time with Sylvia and the boys, in the process scandalizing the local gossips, pushing his already unhappy wife (Radha Mitchell) to the edge, and bringing down the wrath of Sylvia's suspicious mother (Julie Christie). His theater producer (Dustin Hoffman in a comically crusty turn) is openly skeptical that Barrie's new play, about a boy who refuses to grow up, will attract an audience. To complicate the situation, Barrie's efforts to bring off the play begin to collide with Sylvia's mysteriously deteriorating health. The stage is set for a very dramatic and emotional opening night.

In spite of the attractive fantasy elements of the story, this is a tough love movie. Barrie, thrust into the role of de facto father, must teach the children the realities of the adult world without prematurely destroying their childhood. Barrie and Sylvia walk a delicate line, balancing their shared concern for the children and their respective needs for emotional support, against the lack of any socially sanctioned basis for their relationship. Barrie must also deal forthrightly with his failures in his own marriage.

"Finding Neverland" is a small window into the theater world of 1903, where "Peter Pan" was a remarkably innovative production. The rehearsals for the play provide comic relief, while its opening night brings together multiple plots threads. "Finding Neverland" is very highly recommended as a entertaining movie, especially for those with their own childhood memories of Peter Pan.

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Welcome to Blu-Ray

My sons insist that blu-ray is the way to go, so I did. After watching 'Happy Feet' with them I was sold. The detail is amazing. Finding Neverland is one of my favorite story-within-a-story movies. I don't buy all movies on blu-ray (meaning some of the ones I already own), but this one had to be. It's wonderfully done. Kate Winslet is so ethereally beautiful that I love her in anything, and Johnny Depp is perfect in the part. Her boys, befriended by Depp at a time when their mother was dying, were made more thoughtful and appreciative of the magic of the story of Peter Pan and its first debut on the London stage. I love watching the face of a little boy seeing his first 'magical' performance without the blase' expression which kids now would show to anything not graphically enhanced.

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Was expecting a love story

This movie is sort of depressing but it was well written and had great scenery though I felt unsatisfied with having watched it. Maybe because it wasn't what I expected and because the characters future was left uncertain.

Conversations difficult to understand

Clarity of speech needs to be improved say our guests who viewed the DVD with us. I agree. Volume had to be boosted significantly.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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