From: iain
Message:
'Finding Neverland' is the story of how JM Barrie (played by Johnny
Depp) was inspired to write the children's classic 'Peter Pan'. Barrie
is an unhappily married playwrite who meets Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, a
widowed society woman (played by Kate Winslet), and her 4 sons in the
park. Barrie becomes a surrogate uncle to the boys, and finds himself
drawn towards Sylvia.
It's a perfectly pleasant affair with good performances all round. Depp
does a passable Scottish accent (not a Dumfries one though!), and
Winslet is lovely as always. The film is ideally suited to those over 50
who have fond memories of Pan. I found myself yawning through most of
it, as the story is rather boring. I know Depp is trying to have some
sort of mainstream success at the moment and is making films that his
children can watch, but I long for a return to the Depp of 'Ed Wood',
'Blow' and 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. Bring back Rock-n-Roll
Johnny! The campaign starts here!
My problem with the film is that I have never found the story of 'Peter
Pan' interesting, even as a child. I always thought the story was for
posh middle-class English kids who liked visiting mummy and daddies
country retreat in the summers and pretend to be pirates. Most people of
my age I've spoken to hold the same opinion too. I think one of the main
reasons for this is that my generation was far more concerned with the
future than the past, our great story was 'Star Wars', and we all wanted
to be astronauts, not pirates. Today's children might have a hard time
relating too, as most of them want to be celebrities... Pop stars or
actors. With the prolification of video, on-demand internet and computer
games the imagination that is so greatly relied on in 'Peter Pan' is now
in it's death-throes, barely clinging on via grandparents stories of
what it was like before Nintendo and Pokemon.
'Finding Neverland' is Miramax's great Oscar hope. The film has been
receiving great plaudits from the film bibles such as Empire (which
awarded it a five star review), and word of mouth from an older audience
should help it perform reasonably well at the box office. Depp may be in
with a nomination chance again this year at the Oscars, and I do hope he
wins as he can then go back to starring in the films that we all
actually want to see him in.
Hollywood has a terrible habit at the moment. They take great Japanese
horror films, relocate them, put 'stars' in them, and obviously strip
away all the subtitles. 'The Grudge' has the edge over recent US remakes
here as it only stumbles into one of those 'dumbing down' pitfalls,
placing Sarah 'Buffy' Michelle Gellar into the heroines role.
The story goes that the Japanese say when a person dies in terrible
circumstances they hold a grudge and take revenge on anyone who comes
into contact with the place they died. A young mother and her child were
murdered by the mothers jealous husband in a house in the Tokyo suburbs.
Three years later the house is rented out to an American couple and the
husbands invalid mother who have come to Tokyo for work. They hire help
to look after the mother, but the first girl that arrives disappears
after her first visit. Her replacement is Karen Davis, a foreign
exchange student (played by Gellar) in need of a Social Work credit.
The film still takes place in Japan, and it still has a lot of
subtitles. The story is almost exactly the same as the original 'Ju-On :
The Grudge', and the set is exactly the same, using exactly the same
house as the original. The Japanese actors have been re-employed. This
all begs the question... why? I assume Hollywood still has a
misconception that the Western cinema-going public won't go to see a
film unless it stars someone they "know". The suits should look at the
success of films such as 'Hero', 'City of God' and 'Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon' to realise that this is not the case. If a foreign film
is good enough the suits should give the public some credit by giving
the original film a full scale mainstream cinema release. I am hoping
other studios take note of Miramax doing just that with 'Hero' and in
future follow their lead with foreign language films.
Back to the film itself. The story is reasonably good if you haven't
seen the original, and the director (Takashi Shimizu, the director of
the original) manages to steer well clear of the usual US horror cliches
and cheese and delivers a solid genre film that relies on creeping
tension rather than gore to deliver its shocks. Hollywood take note.
'Finding Neverland' is on general release right now. 'The Grudge' is on
general release from Friday.
(hyperlinked reviews with pics on www.killyourtv.co.uk)
iain
