Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland: 2004 Cross-Dressing as 1904
Published January 26, 2005
For a less literal-minded approach to literary historic anecdote, watch Gavin Millar's Dreamchild (1985), from a script by Dennis Potter. In Dreamchild the aged Alice Liddell comes to realize the emotion the Reverend Charles Dodgson had invested in telling stories to amuse her and her sisters some seventy years earlier (which he developed and published under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll). Like Finding Neverland it lays its foundation over literary excavations into the origins of a famous work of fantasy; unlike Finding Neverland, however, it erects a new structure of its own atop that foundation. Dreamchild stands intriguingly to the side of Carroll's Alice books and works of psychosexual speculation about the author. Finding Neverland overvalues Peter Pan as a flight of fancy but would never itself be mistaken for one, even though it's as much romance as fact.
A last note on Finding Neverland's failure to recreate reality circa 1904: A friend repeats to Barrie the town gossip that he's sexually interested in the Llewelyn Davies boys (all of whom are underaged) and Barrie's response struck me as the reaction a man would have to a general discussion of the topic (Who could do such a thing to innocent children?) not the reaction of an innocent man to an accusation of what, at the time, would have been almost literally unspeakable. Click here to read a current assessment of the truth of the charge on The Straight Dope.
You can find this review and a lot besides at The Kitchen Cabinet.
Alan Dale is the author of What We Do Best: American Movie Comedies of the 1990s and Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies.
- Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland: 2004 Cross-Dressing as 1904
- Published: January 26, 2005
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- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Art House, Video: Drama, Video: Fantasy, Video: Romantic
- Writer: Alan Dale
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Thanks for the comment. My problem writing about Depp is that he's so very likeable, not to mention pretty, I find myself disarmed as a critic. So I have to struggle back to reason and I guess what I was trying to describe were the limitations of likeability. I don't think he has the whipcrack way with comedy of, say,
George Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty. He barely seems like an adult. But I do agree with you that he's getting subtler. I hope I made clear that his exchanges with Radha Mitchell in this movie are superbly pointed. (Did your daughter like him in Before Night Falls? Just kidding.)
Penn is a trial when he's self-serious, always better with humor mixed in. He was generation-defining in Fast Times, but I've liked him more recently than you, in Sweet and Lowdown.
I completely agree with Depp's perpetual childlikeness, though I don't find him childish, he's quite serious as far as I can tell and he seems willing to go all the way with the "blank slate" style of acting, which is either very brave or some kind of surrender.
And my daughter likes Jack, but she likes Will better in Pirates. BTW, I thought Orli was quite surprisingly good in that, showing much broader range than as Super Elf
The idea of "surrender" is interesting. To the director? He really is a visionary director's creature--Tim Burton, for instance.
As for Orlando Bloom, how's this for an unpopular opinion: I don't think anyone in the Ring movies will become a movie star. Jackson used the actors in limited, repetitive ways, but apart from Cate Blanchett and Ian McKellen they're pretty limited to begin with. (Maybe why Jackson cast them.) Does Viggo Mortensen have a second expression? I thought Sean Bean was impressive in the first one and Brad Dourif in the second but most of the cast was outacted by a special effect. Ouch.
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fascinating and intricate as always, thanks Alan. I haven't seen this yet (rarely do until they're out on DVD and cable), but I think I have a higher opinion of Depp's acting than you do: I thought he showed both exceptional comedic characterization and timing in Pirates, which due to having a swashbuckling 5 year-old daughter, I have seen many times. I appreciate the line he is able to walk between the broad and the subtle a little more each time, which is a very good sign.
I totally agree with your take on "torturously drab" 21 Grams, which just about killed me to watch, and about Penn in general, who I last found highly amusing in Fast Times.