With all of the writing I've done in my life, for most of that time I hadn't a clue how it was possible to write fiction; how to create characters out of whole cloth, breathe life into them, and put them into situations. When I finally began to write some fiction five years ago, it was as if a magic door opened, and behind them were characters -- fully-realized, real people, with real lives and real experiences, eager to get out.

The image of the inspiration that lies behind doors is a repeated one in Marc Forster's wondrous FINDING NEVERLAND, loosely based on the events in the life of J.M. Barrie that resulted in the writing of Peter Pan.

It would seem to be a vaguely inappropriate time to release this film, with the oddity that is Michael Jackson, with his own personal Neverland and an odd proclivity towards children that may be less than savory, still lurking just behind today's headlines. Of course, this is also the time of year when we start a celebration which involves an old man who breaks into people's houses in the dead of night and leaves toys to children he doesn't know, and no one wonders about HIS motivation. It's therefore even more amazing that in revisiting the Llewelyn-Davies boys who inspired the story, we rediscover the magical story that has enthralled generations of children.

Forster's last film was the decidedly adult (and in this reviewer's opinion, overrated) Monster's Ball. In Finding Neverland, he takes on the kind of period mores that are usually the province of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, tosses in Kate Winslet in full haggard-yet-luminous glory, and tops it off with that most fascinating of child-men, Johnny Depp, to create a film that is beautiful to look at, laden with humorous touches, and yet can still tap something primal in the audience that makes it the most joyous, innocent, and emotional four-hanky film of the year.

Today, a playwright with writer's block, coming off a stinker of a play, who finds inspiration by four boys all under the age of twelve would be the subject of sly glances, gossip, and endless speculation on the Fox News Network. FINDING NEVERLAND creates a more innocent time, in which a grown man with the heart of a child is reminded how to tap the whimsy within and in the process, create one of the most beloved pieces of children's literature. Forster is wise enough to allow the audience to share his vision of Barrie's point of view in how this inspiration may have occurred. Just when a scene in which the four boisterous boys are jumping on their beds in a burst of pre-bedtime energy, Barrie envisions them magically flying out the window -- an image since repeated in every stage and film rendition of Peter Pan. Instead of portraying this sight as arousing an emotionally stunted pedophile, Forster gently reminds us that flight is simply the logical extension of what that brief second of being airborne means to a bed-jumping child.

As with most biopics, FINDING NEVERLAND, with its casting of the highly mediagenic Johnny Depp in a role that no one else could have played, imbues Barrie with a glamour that the real man lacked. Barely five feet tall and the less-favored son who could never replace his dead brother in his mother's affections, Barrie regarded himself as both a social and sexual failure. Depp wears this role so confidently that the raging self-doubt that Barrie possessed comes through only in a sequence in which he reveals the childhood trauma he has shared with no one until now. Yet if the stunted adult that Barrie was fails to come through, the sense of play he undoubtedly possessed comes through perfectly. Depp has a very real rapport with the young actors who portray the Llewelyn-Davies boys, particularly twelve-year-old Freddie Highmore, in an extraordinary performance as the traumatized Peter.

Depp is interesting in that for all his good looks, he's an oddly asexual screen presence, which allows him to portray Barrie's growing and not-quite-appropriate friendship with the boys' mother, Sylvia (Kate Winslet) as the chaste connection it apparently was. It's difficult to imagine another actor who could throw himself so effortlessly into the role-playing games, in full costume, that Barrie plays with the boys. These are some of the funniest kid-fantasy sequences captured on film since Peter Billingsley was "Bad Bart" in A Christmas Story. Depp has particular fun spoofing his own Captain Jack Sparrow character in one wonderful fantasy sequence in which he captains a pirate ship, auditioning the boys for jobs as pirates. This playful ability first showed itself in the daffy 1992 film Benny and Joon, in which Depp channeled the spirits of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Here, Depp once again reveals himself as an extraordinary physical comic. He may be the greatest silent film actor of our time, for all that he also seems able to affect any accent required of him -- a rarity in American actors.

For aficionados of fabulousness, the pairing of Johnny Depp with Kate Winslet is the stuff of dreams. Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies is here a relatively thankless role, yet Winslet imbues the dying mother with a steely resolve we don't expect. Her Sylvia doesn't lay about languidly, wasting away prettily. To the end, she is as tough and protective of her children as a lioness, insisting on a normal life for them that she knows she is unable to provide.

What's so wonderful about David Magee's screenplay is the complexities of the characters' motivations and the way they are woven together. It seems inevitable that Barrie would be attracted to a mother as fiercely devoted as Sylvia, when his own was so dismissive of him, simply because he was alive. Sylvia's toughness seems inevitable in the scenes in which she butts heads with her mother, the formidable Lady DuMaurier (Julie Christie, the 1960's beauty, now routinely portraying grandmothers). It seems equally inevitable that he would take a particular interest in the lost Peter, whose anger, grief, and bitterness seems jarring in someone so young, encouraging the boy to exorcise his demons by letting them out on paper. Peter is so compelling a character, and so beautifully embodied by young Freddie Highmore, it makes the fact that the real Peter, who committed suicide at age 63 after growing to hate not just the character he inspired, but also its creator, that much more tragic.

Forster at times overdoes the whimsical fantasy just a bit, though we can certainly understand why he would want to do so. At times the film seems like a clunkier version of Tim Burton's Big Fish, particularly when a sweet and funny scene in which Depp as Barrie waltzes with Porthos, his huge dog of indeterminate breed (the real Porthos was a St. Bernard) turns a perfectly lovely English park into a rococo circus-as-dance-floor. But if his need to make Barrie's fantasy world flesh sometimes overtakes his better sense, it also gives us the extraordinary finale, in which the cast of the new hit production of the play Peter Pan, led by the melodic-voiced Kelly MacDonald, re-creates the film in the Llewelyn-Davies' parlor. Forster's visualization of Neverland, which incorporates elements from 19th century circus posters, Cirque du Soleil, and the world of Maxfield Parrish, is a gorgeous thing to behold. It's enough to make you forget, as you reach for one Kleenex after another, that your chain has just been firmly yanked. By the time you realize how you've been manipulated, you no longer care, because you too, now believe in Neverland.

-- Jill Cozzi

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