‘Finding Neverland’ will enchant you

Last year’s imaginative live-action movie of J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” turned out to be an unexpected Christmas flop. Maybe it needed a star like Johnny Depp to put it over with multiplex audiences.

We’ll soon see, because Depp plays Barrie in “Finding Neverland,” an enchanting and quite touching Barrie biography that includes a lot of “Peter Pan.” Indeed, the movie, based on Allan Knee’s play, “The Man Who Was Peter Pan,” is devoted almost entirely to the creation of “Peter Pan” in the London theater world of 1903.

Written by David Magee, the screenplay begins with the proposition that “Peter Pan” couldn’t come at a better time for the gentlemanly Barrie. His latest play, “Little Mary,” is a disastrous flop for his producer (Dustin Hoffman). Barrie is also estranged from his wife, Mary (Radha Mitchell), who doesn’t have much sympathy with his professional woes.

Quick facts Starring: Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell, Dustin Hoffman Director: Marc Forster Run time: 1 hour, 46 minutes MPAA rating: PG

Wool-gathering in a park one day, he meets an equally melancholy widow, Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet), and her four boys: George, Michael, Jack and Peter. He becomes obsessed with them and offers to help the family. This doesn’t go down well with Mary or Sylvia’s protective mother-in-law, Mrs. Du Maurier (Julie Christie).

Eventually the rumors surrounding his attachment to the boys threaten to transform Barrie into a turn-of-the-century edition of Michael Jackson. But Depp plays the role with such asexual delicacy and mischief that we, the movie audience, can’t take the rumors seriously. Neither can the theater audience that witnesses the first performance of “Peter Pan.”

The result is one of the most personal movies ever made about the act of creation in the theater. While “Topsy-Turvy” and “Shakespeare in Love” concentrated on the contributions of an ensemble, “Finding Neverland” has to take place primarily in Barrie’s brain, where all the elements that make up “Peter Pan” must meet. As each piece falls into place, we see how he stretched and altered his real-life models to create the Neverland lost boys who won't grow up.

The director, Marc Forster, who guided Halle Berry to an Oscar in the ragged “Monster’s Ball,” once more does a superior job with his actors, though this time he’s dealing with more challenging material. He more than rises to the occasion, transforming what could have been a cerebral exercise into something much more connected and substantial.

Winslet, whose seemingly effortless versatility deserves comparison with Meryl Streep, contributes another indelible performance. Hoffman is splendid in a somewhat underwritten role, as is Ian Hart as Barrie’s pal, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Christie, who’s been mostly restricted to cameos lately, gets the chance to show what she can do with a character who is not as cruel as she seems.

The boys, of course, must be just right if “Finding Neverland” is to work at all. Not only do they seem to have sprung from the same family, Nick Roud, Joe Prospero, Luke Spill and Freddie Highmore (who plays Peter) seem more than capable of inspiring one of the enduring fantasies of the 20^th Century.

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