Finding Neverland Critic Reviews

Gently seductive, genuinely tender and often moving without being maudlin.Read the full review

The story is told gently and simply without excess sentimentality. It is a welcome departure from more contrived holiday fare.Read the full review

Depp is a charm. He becomes his own, subtly compelling Barrie.Read the full review

Compelling and life-affirming.Read the full review

Takes liberties with its hero, which is hardly a crime (the real-life Barrie was extremely childlike), but the movie chases after magic with overproduced fantasy sequences, and a feel-good, literalist climax that betrays the very notion of imagination as a force superior to reality.Read the full review

A handsome-looking film about the writer and his unripe inspirations, the actor Johnny Depp neither soars nor crashes, but moseys forward with vague purpose and actorly restraint. Read the full review

Precious and uninsightful but ends beautifully.Read the full review

Forster's movie doesn't want to grow up, but it doesn't seem to understand childhood, either. For a film about the life-affirming power of imagination, Finding Neverland displays precious little of its own. Read the full review

Depp portrays a fellow who is openly gentle to the core, and the actor just about wraps the movie around his lilting delivery and quiescent gaze. Read the full review