The reviews split almost down the middle, and the praise, where it comes, lands on the same things. Most admirers point to Johnny Depp’s Barrie, played as a grown man who never quite left the nursery, and to Kate Winslet opposite him; the young Freddie Highmore is mentioned more than once. Marc Forster’s direction is credited for the way the boys’ games in the garden slide into fantasy and back without the joins showing, and several find the mix of comedy and grief handled with tact.
The doubters watch the same film and find it sugary. Maudlin and saccharine are the words that recur, along with the complaint that it is a period piece too polite to look at what it skirts. The Guardian goes further and calls Depp torpid, which nobody else does. The spread is wide, from the highest possible rating to something near the floor, with only one review in the middle, which suggests the whimsy either works on a viewer or grates from the first scene.