After his last play was a disaster, Scottish writer J.M. Barrie has been trying to come up something better. J.M. likes to escape reality and live in a fantasy. One day while he is at the park with his dog, Barrie meets a widow named Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and her four boys, George, Jack, Michael and Peter. Barrie develops a friendship with Sylvia and her boys and they become an inspiration for this story he has in mind about a boy who never grew up. One night, J.M. tells Sylvia about a wonderful imaginary place called Neverland. Young Peter has been down a lot ever since his father died, but J.M. Barrie helps put his mind on something else. Peter wants to be a writer like Barrie. When Sylvia gets a chest cold, Peter gets upset because he fears he will lose her. The night of Barrie’s play, Sylvia becomes very sick. She has Peter go see the play. Peter informs Barrie about his mother’s condition. Barrie goes to Sylvia to check up on her and keep her company. Meanwhile the audience is really getting into Barrie’s play, “Peter Pan”. Sylvia tells Barrie to go back to the play and find Peter. As soon as Barrie gets back, people are clapping and cheering because they love “Peter Pan”. Shortly after, J.M. Barrie has “Peter Pan” performed in Sylvia’s living room so that she, George, Jack and Michael can see the play. During the play, Peter Pan says "clap your hands if you believe in fairies". The family claps a magical place shows up. Sylvia gets to see what Neverland looks like. Sylvia has passed away and Peter is upset now that his mom is gone too. In Sylvia’s will it says that J.M. Barrie is to be the guardian to her boys next to her mother, Emma du Maurier. Barrie tells Peter that his mother will always be with him as long as he believes.
Blaine: “Finding Neverland” is a magical and emotional film and that’s because it had the right guys to bring it to life, screenwriter David Magee and director Marc Foster. The script had already been written, but as the project was in development more ideas were added to it. Marc Foster decided to do some research on J.M. Barrie after reading the script and find out what else there is to know about him. What David and Marc wanted to do with “Finding Neverland” was to show what they thought was going through J.M Barrie’s imagination. They didn’t want to make a biopic about Barrie, they wanted “Finding Neverland” to be about a certain time of his life.
It’s pretty cool how there are scenes where it cuts back and forth from fantasy to reality like when J.M. is playing cowboys and indians with the boys. It’ll show them in the Davies' backyard and then it’ll cut to the fantasy world where they are in a small desert town. Another scene is when J.M. Barrie is performing for Sylvia and the boys by dancing with his dog. In the fantasy world J.M. is a ringleader dancing with a bear.
Marc Foster thought that Johnny Depp represented the man who never wants to grow up because he has this child still within him. Kate Winslet said working with Johnny Depp was like working with a fifth child. Johnny had some ideas for items Barrie should have in the movie. One was the cane with a mirror at the end of it so J.M. could see the audience and their reaction to his play. Another idea of Johnny’s was having a ball attached to a fishing pole to play fetch with his dog at the park. Johnny brought a fart machine with him to entertain the boys during the scene where Barrie and his wife have the Davies family over for dinner. So when they are laughing in that scene it’s because Johnny was making sounds with that device. But in the movie the boys are laughing at Barrie putting a spoon on his nose.
“Finding Neverland” also shows J.M. Barrie’s marriage with his wife, Mary Ansell Barrie, falling apart. They have nothing in common and they’re completely different from each other. Sylvia Llewelyn Davies on the other hand finds Barrie interesting because he is so full of life. In the movie it shows J.M. Barrie meeting Sylvia at the park, but in real life he met her at a dinner party.
At the beginning of “Finding Neverland” you see Dustin Hoffman’s character, Charles Frohman, who was the producer of J.M. Barrie’s plays, greeting guests as they arrive to the theater. There is two doors and a lot of the extras on set would go to the door Dustin Hoffman was at just to shake his hand because they were all fans of him. In the script it said that Charles Frohman would be in the dressing room dressed as Captain Hook, but Dustin Hoffman didn’t want to do it because he had already played Captain Hook once in the movie, “Hook”, and Marc Foster didn’t realize that until Dustin pointed it out. So David Magee wrote a new scene where Charles is just looking at the names of the cast. As you see Charles though the movie you see him as someone who has a lot of doubt for “Peter Pan” because J.M. Barrie’s last play was a disaster, it cost him a lot of money and he thinks “Peter Pan” doesn’t make any sense. He’s afraid no one will like it. But it isn’t till he sees the play and sees the audience really getting into it that his eyes finally open and sees how original and magical “Peter Pan” is.
J.M. Barrie was taking a lot of risks with “Peter Pan” back then. What “Peter Pan" required had never been done before like people flying on wires. It also required pirates, fairies, mermaids and indians all together. A lot of people thought it was nonsense back then, but that didn’t stop J.M. Barrie. He was bringing his imagination to life. Neverland was a place he imagined when he was a boy. And the time he spent with the Davies family helped inspire “Peter Pan”. Watching that scene where "Peter Pan” is introduced to the world for the first time is like you’re traveling back in time and witnessing something very special. J.M. Barrie’s play became an inspiration for a lot of people’s imaginations. “Peter Pan" became his masterpiece. Mark Foster was happy to have big actors like Kelly Macdonald and Toby Jones be in “Finding Neverland” even though they had small parts. Kelly plays Peter Pan in the play and Toby is Captain Hook’s first mate, Mr. Smee.
One of the things Mark Foster learned about J.M. Barrie while he was doing his research was that Barrie performed “Peter Pan” for Sylvia and the boys and that helped him come up with the idea of J.M. Barrie having “Peter Pan” be done in the Davies’ living room so that Sylvia and the boys can see the play for themselves. The ending to “Finding Neverland” is one of the saddest endings because it is so emotional. You see J.M. Barrie comforting young Peter after he has lost his mother. J.M. says that Peter's mother will always be with him as long as he remembers her. The teary look in Freddie Highmore’s eyes helps make the ending powerful. And then of course the theme of Jan A. P. Kaczmarek’s music score in background helps make it sad as well.
My rating on “Finding Neverland” is five out of five stars.
