by MARK SLUTSKY

There's magical, and there's corny. And more often than not, the two are separated by a very fine line, especially in the movies. Finding Neverland, which explores the events that inspired J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, briefly skirts that line before veering off into terribly cornball territory. For all this movie has going for it, including a superb cast, in the end, it's no more than an embarrassing pile of cheese.

Marc Forster (Monster's Ball) directs, and what a group of actors he's assembled. Johnny Depp plays Barrie, a well-known playwright coming off a flop who's trapped in an uncomfortable marriage with his ambitious wife Mary (Radha Mitchell, in a thankless role). On one of his daily jaunts to the park, Depp encounters a young widow (Kate Winslet) and her four sons. Barrie starts to see more of them, playing along with their make-believe games and encouraging the dour young Peter (Freddie Highmore) to lighten up and have some fun. Soon he's writing a new play based around their wonderful adventures...

Guess what play that might be? Though, we don't actually see the production of Peter Pan until the end of the film, Finding Neverland liberally sprinkles little fantasy sequences of Barrie and the boys' imaginary world. While this idea has potential (and Peter Jackson already fulfilled it with Heavenly Creatures), here it comes across as just kinda cheap and icky or, at best, Wonderful-World-of-Disney-esque. You can't really fault the actors, especially Winslet as the chaste, consumptive widow living in a Victorian melodrama. Julie Christie and Dustin Hoffman are here too, as Winslet's mother and Depp's harried manager, respectively. But even their roles are nothing special.

To recap: we have a middle-aged, popular artist who doesn't want to grow up, a group of playful, innocent children who come to stay at his cottage, the social scandal caused by their special, harmless friendship and a place called Neverland. Unless this is designed to be Michael Jackson's new favourite movie, there's nothing really magical here.

Finding Neverland opens Friday, Nov. 19

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