How others will see it. A lack of action excludes many would-be viewers, but star power, exemplified by Depp and Winslet, compensates for the film's intellectual pretensions. Most film fans will be charmed by Depp's thoughtful performance, but beware, the ending is a tearjerker.
How I felt about it. It is nice to see Depp playing a relatively normal character, and it is good that the relationship between Depp and Winslet remains platonic. If he expressed a sexual interest in her, it would change the nature of their friendship. Depp's principal motivation is to please his audience, with the exception of his painfully serious wife, whom he barely notices.
Finding Neverland is an exploration of the power and limitations of imagination. In a play, pretending can bring Tinker Bell back to a full recovery, but the irony is that Winslet, apparently racked by tuberculosis, views this scene knowing that a similar effort on her behalf cannot save her. Instead of expecting a miracle, she prefers denial, a different sort of pretending. You're not getting better, you're not sick at all.
Barrie's interest in the pretty widow and her four male children is viewed unfavorably by society. This is partly because he's married, of course, but also because a grown man should be a father figure to children, not a playmate. That is, according to the culture of Victorian England, which values service above fleeting pleasure. Adult hedonism is traditionally associated with corruption, even if it takes place with intimates.
"You find a glimmer of happiness in this world, and there's always someone who wants to destroy it," Barrie tells his friend Arthur, in a rare moment of bitterness. Arthur replies, "Once you get a bit of notoriety, people watch you, and they will look for ways to drive you down."
Yet non-conformity is celebrated as well, under the right circumstances. Barrie's surreal new play is a smash hit, despite the fact it features a flashlight and a man in a dog suit as major supporting characters, and has an adult androgynous female in the title role, playing a preadolescent boy. It's easy to imagine "Peter Plan" as a curious flop, as were Van Gogh's paintings and Edgar Allen Poe's fiction at the time of the initial appearance. The willingness of British theater to embrace engaging fantasy, especially given Barrie's social reputation, is gratifying. Theater is all too often a group of people standing or sitting and talking.