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A sublimely entertaining movie

"Finding Neverland" is a wonderful movie - sweet, touching, evocative and imaginative. It's not a blockbuster kind of movie, but it will stand the rest of time. Years from now, when many of today's hit movies may be viewed as quaint and laughable, this movie will still be enjoyed.

This is the movie version of the events that inspired J.M. Barrie to write the classic play, "Peter Pan", over one hundred years ago.

James Barrie [Johnny Depp] was a popular British playwright. He was devastated when one of his plays flopped. Soon afterwards, in a London Park he frequented, he met a remarkable family - Sylvia Llewlyn Davis [Kate Winslett] and her four young boys, Jack, George, Michael and Peter. James had a childless, loveless marriage with Mary [Radha Mitchell]. Sylvia was a widow. Though the movie doesn't say so, I assume she had had a joyous, loving relationship with her dead husband.

Barrie was well off. Sylvia was poor, although she came from a wealthy family, headed by her dominating mother [Julie Christie]. As Barrie bonded with Sylvia and her boys, his imagination began to create Peter Pan, Neverland, and its inhabitants. The movie shows the process of Barrie's imagination to great effect.

I have read that the movie is not historically accurate because it does not put some events in correct chronological order. This fact may bother historians, but it shouldn't deter most moviegoers who have little knowledge of Barrie's life to begin with.

As always, Depp gives an amazing performance. Like the movie, Depp will be remembered fondly years from now. Like Hepburns Katherine and Audrey, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, among others, Depp has a gift for acting that transcends time.