(PG, 91 mins): Starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell and Dustin Hoffman. Directed by Marc Foster.

Tearing Peter Pan from the Lost Boys and stripping him bare of his elf-like clobber, Finding Neverland reveals the true origin of fantasyland's eternal boy.

Set in London, 1903, the ever talented Johnny Depp adopts the role of JM Barrie, playwright and creator of Peter Pan.

After experiencing a career pitfall with the flop of his new show, The Admirable Crichton, Barrie finds solace with a walk in the park where he stumbles upon four young boys playing and becomes immediately entranced by their games.

It soon transpires that the four boys are sons of Sylvia Llewyn (Kate Winslet), a doting mother whose husband has recently died in battle.

The Llewyn family and Barrie soon become very close and the four boys' antics prove to be the inspiration that unleashes Barrie's imagination as a writer.

What follows are a series of enchanting events that are evocative of Neverland.

Leading the boys on a magical ride through their imagination, Barrie creates an elaborate make-believe world where anything is possible.

Together, they invent madcap flights of fancy complete with talking dogs, flying children and swashbuckling escapades with pirates.

In these games, Barrie adopts the Peter Pan role, true to real life, as the boy who would not grow up. The Llewyn brothers play the Lost Boys, indulging Pan in his world of pure imagination, while Sylvia, provides the grounding backbone.

Conjuring the alternate world for the boys, this film takes the conventional and turn its on its head, then on its side and back on its head again just for good measure.

Directed by Marc Forster, whose previous film Monster's Ball was the grim prison drama which won Halle Berry her Best Actress Oscar, you could be forgiven for fearing how Finding Neverland would transfer on to the big screen.

Keeping relatively true to Barrie's life, albeit with a few omissions to ease the narrative, this fictional retelling never becomes too cloying.

It's not Disney by any measure but the essence of the tale does ring the same and you would be hard pushed not to be touched by its magic.