Finding Neverland
#46 in my movie challenge for the year, Finding Neverland was good, but not great. Johnny Depp did a wonderful job, and the movie had some lovely effects for the interplay between reality and imaginination. It did a valiant job avoiding sentimentality. Even so, there were times that it dipped, perhaps unavoidably given the subject matter, into preciousness. One other thing that nagged was that it has not been that long since I’ve read Peter Pan; the presentation of how Barrie viewed children in the movie does not mesh with my memory of the book. I recall that the book portrays children as selfish and rather cruel. It doesn’t paint Peter Pan in a romantic or likeable way. I will have to re-read my copy (which has lovely illustrations by the late Trina Schart Hyman, one of my favorite illustrators) to see if the disjunction lies in my memory or in the film.