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Children, it may be time to kill Dr. Tom. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe movies are slowly digging themselves out of the "Gladiator vs. Erin Brockovich for best picture of the year" days. Either way, I can only praise "Finding Neverland," a cuddly tear-jerker with English people in it that has a message about the importance of magic in life.

Do I wear silk underwear now too, you ask? Do I dance around in the mirror to "Milkshake" when no one is looking? Is my penis in another man's butt right now as I'm typing this? The answer to all three of these important questions is no...

The filmmakers just simply took the most Oscar-begging, grandma'll-love-it, pansy-ass subject to make a movie out of and made a solid piece of storytelling with it. Hats off to director Marc Forster and screenwriter David Magee, and nothing but more praise as usual to Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, all of whom walked an incredibly fine line between drama and melodrama for almost two hours of narrative without tilting over.

The examples of this craftsmanship come in many little tidbits that add up to a lot in the end. Johnny Depp gives a superb performance about a man who lives in his own imagination ("Neverland") without ever going off on some homoerotic monologue the frolicking unicorns, rainbows, lack of tears, etc.

Kate Winslet plays a widowed mother of four with a serious health ailment without crying her way through even one scene. The child actors can actually act. The play-within-a-movie sequence is just as involving as any other scene.

As far as the plot, which you all know I never like to go into too much, it's about the guy who wrote Peter Pan. Let's not spoil anymore, this one's worth seeing.

The most remarkable thing about this flick is not that it's good, but that it managed to not be bad. It's practically a miracle. In the hands of the wrong actors, director, and so-forth, this script (not to bash the script in any way) could have been the foundation of the sappiest piece of garbage shat onto the face of the Earth for awards season. Instead, it's, again, a movie about a quirky Euro playwright at the turn of the 20th century who takes a liking to playing make-believe games with four young boys... that doesn't make us want to crack Michael Jackson jokes until the credits roll.

To accomplish such a thing is, sorry to sound like a mainstream critic, a triumph. Maybe not as big a deal as curing a disease or whatever, but still a triumph. It isn't the best movie I've ever seen in my entire life, but because I can't talk shit about it, I must admit defeat and give it a rating of five bongs. It was like watching an actual story on a screen, which is (I think) exactly what a good movie is supposed to be.

(five bongs)

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