Steeped in melancholy, the strange story of J. M. Barrie, the Victorian who wrote Peter Pan, has the makings of a marvellous tale and one doozy of a case history. Born in Scotland in 1860, Barrie was a playwright and novelist who created in 1904 a classic of childrens literature. Finding Neverland mainly concerns the period during which Barrie (Johnny Depp) met and befriended Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) and her brood of boys. Mr. Depp and Ms. Winslet are pleasant to watch, as are the actors who play the Davies boys, but they havent been pushed to their limits. Instead of real quirks, strange habits, moments of everyday gas, gurgle and grunting, movies like this give us sumptuous production design, meticulous costumes and stories meant to leave us dewy-eyed and thoughtful, if never actually disturbed. The New York Times