Worth viewing, but could have been better.

This film tells the "inspired by true events" (so says a caption at the beginning) of how J.M. Barrie was inspired to write the play "Peter Pan" in 1908, through his friendship with a family of four young boys and their widowed mother. On a higher level, Barrie's "Neverland" is portrayed as the power of imagination to cope with grief.

Without giving any of the plot away, I do want to say that the storyline manages to achieve a gentle pace that builds to an inspiring climactic scene with the help of excerpts from the play "Peter Pan." The fusing of the plot with the play at this point to reveal the vision of "Neverland" enhances the poignancy of both, and managed to draw me in emotionally.

There was one element that personally grated on me and that if altered would have made it a better movie for me.

Throughout the movie, the play-acting scenes between Barrie and the children alternate between "real-life" and fantasy scenes. For example, in one scene they pretend that they are pirates while playing in the woods, then suddenly it cuts to an actual pirate ship rolling on a CGI ocean, and the actors are wearing full pirate costumes and makeup. I felt that the use of fantasy was overdone in this case and dumbs down the audience.

It would have been interesting if these earlier scenes had stuck to the "real-life" only, challenging the audience to use their imaginations, too, rather than being force-fed the vision of the director. More improvisations between Barrie and the children would have been fun to see, and if the fantasy scenery was reserved just for the climactic scene (where Barrie's vision of the play is fully realized) it would have made an even greater impact. The transition between the children improvising in their back yard, to the play rehearsals, to the opening night performance in a theater, and finally to the scene where Barrie metaphorically (through the use of a fantasy scene) reveals "Neverland" to the family could have been really cool.

Watching this movie did make me realize that the original "Peter Pan" has some more depth to it than I previously would have thought, being somewhat familiar with the subsequent watered-down adaptations of it. After seeing "Finding Neverland" I am interested in finding a copy of it to read.

Stupid name & stupid movie

Who would want to find Neverland, just so they can never grow up like Peter Pan what a childish name for a movie. Johnny Depp is too good to be playing in boring movies like this.

Perfect!

This film was absolutely flawless! Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet deliver breathtaking performances with a great supporting cast including Dustin Hoffman and Julie Christie. Finding Neverland perfectly creates the inspiration that lead J.M. Barrie to write the beloved "Peter Pan" and has the situation with the family mirror what Barrie writes in the play.
It also does an excellent job of merging fantasy and reality in many scenes, and it gives even adults that suspension of disbelief, that feeling of letting the imagination take flight, with no inhibitions whatsoever.
This movie deserved an Oscar!
Bravo!