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Finding
Neverland |
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STORE |
GALLERY |
OFFICIAL SITE
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Year:
2004 |
Rated:
PG
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Runtime:
Insert
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Starring:
Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Dustin
Hoffman, Radha Mitchell, Nick Roud |
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Directed
by: Marc Forster |
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Written
by: David Magee |
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Based
on the play by:
Allan Knee |
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Music
by: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek |
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Movie
Studio: Miramax Films |
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VHS
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DVD
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SOUNDTRACK
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BOOK
Here is the original play that the film is about.
Very cool. - CDM |
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Review |
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I enjoy a wide range of movies and I believe that the true goal
of cinema is to take you out of your eight dollar seat and into
the characters themselves. Finding Neverland does that. It is
one of those rare movies that can change the way you look at
things, which is the central idea of the film. It is the
struggle between the freedom of your imagination encaged by the
pains of the world. Author and playwright, J.M. Barrie has
Neverland unfold before him through his many adventures with the
Davies brothers and their ill-fated mother. Together, the
family learns that this grim world can be cast aside for a
lighter place where children never grow up and loved ones never
leave.
Oscar should be calling for this movie and for the thespians who
portray these wonderfully complex characters. Johnny Depp gives
one of his best performances of his or any career. His own
child like qualities drip from his famously boyish visage. He
is our modern day Peter Pan and no other actor could pull off
Barrie with such silky smooth subtlety. But young Freddie
Highmore really steals the show. This is the best performance
by a child actor ever. He plays the grief stricken Peter
Davies, the boy who is the central inspiration for Barrie's
Peter Pan. Freddie perfectly dons the boy who is growing up
just too fast and all hardship is seen in his saddened eyes.
This film is bound to wring tears from even the most manly of
men. Because when the credits are rolling, we are but children
again. |
DVD
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By Trinity
Super
Two words, “just perfect.” |
| Call me sentimental but ‘Finding Neverland’ was exactly what I
had imagined the creation of the legend of Peter Pan to be. The
movie fully grounds the childhood classic in reality without
disturbing any of the fairy dust and magic that makes the story of
Peter Pan what it is. I would not even call this a children’s film.
Instead, it connects adults back to childhood with a gentle subtlety
that could not have come through without Depp’s portrayal of James
Barrie and and Freddie Highmore’s portrayal of Peter Davies. The
film follows Barrie as he gets to know the four Davies children and
his interactions with them. These interactions include “playing
pretend” at being pirates, cowboys and Indians and are in no way
what the audience nor British society suppose that a great
playwright would do with his time but Depp presents a slightly
eccentric Barrie with great faith in childhood and imagination.
Peter Davies, his inspiration for Peter Pan, has given up his
childhood and it is through watching Barrie that the quiet, fragile
Peter finds Neverland. Kate Winslet (Sylvia Davies), although a
breath-taking leading lady and the perfect vision of motherhood, is
not Barrie’s romantic interest. Their relationship is purely
platonic which parallels and explains why Peter never fell in love
with Wendy. |
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| Beyond the perfect casting, what also makes this
movie what it is, is the under abundance of special cinematography.
In Barrie’s playing pretend with the Davies children, the film only
now and then presents to the audience what playing pretend really
looks like to the children and Neverland is not revealed in its true
flare until the very end of the film. These snapshots of our
childhood imagination provide just enough room for the audience of
adults to feel comfortable watching the children play pretend and
for just a moment place themselves in Peter’s shoes. The audience
grows with Peter, from his early onset of adulthood to his slow
discovery of Neverland. Audience members will leave the theater
wondering where time has gone and when it was the last time they
went out to play. Intertwined in the film is the wisdom of Peter
Pan, intertwined so delicately that the audience never realizes that
they are steadily growing backwards throughout the film, finding
their own Neverland. |
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