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But, just as network news imploded when executives realized that news could be profitable, the Miramax philosophy began to show weakness once it started expecting big profits and demanding multiple Oscars from films built to be small. Indeed, like a wolf that has just acquired a taste for blood, Harvey's Oscar upset in 1998, when Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture, turned shifting priorities into a bull-in-a-china shop corporate strategy.

The brothers would attend film festivals and buy films solely to keep them from being bought by another distributor. Harvey began earning his Harvey Scissorhands nickname by snatching movies from their creators, locking them out of the edit bay, and making changes (only Harvey could alienate Martin Scorsese like he did on Gangs of New York). Come Oscar season, they would quickly and sometimes cruelly abandon films that didn't look like a contender, while throwing lavish parties and buying full color ad pages for marginal films that were deemed their best shot at an Academy Award. In 2001, I attended the premiere and after-party for In The Bedroom, a bracing drama that still smacked of Miramax desperately riding their chosen horse, shoving it down the throats of Academy voters. Movies manufactured with the sole and transparent purpose of winning Oscars (like Cold Mountain) are never as good as movies made with the sole purpose of being a good movie.

But despite all the great films they've released (and make no mistake, they've released many terrific movies), Miramax has a very specific and very troubling tendency. They take foreign films and lighter, more artistically brittle movies (many by foreign directors) and sand them down to make them acceptable to mainstream American audiences. Films like The Shipping News and Chocolat are bland fables calculated to go down easier in Boise, Idaho. The Cider House Rules, Like Water for Chocolate, and Life is Beautiful seem devoid of real emotion and replaced by a less sophisticated form of pre-mixed, instant oatmeal emotion. Miramax has a good track record championing difficult fare, especially films that parent company Disney was loathe to release (for instance Kids, Dogma, Priest, and especially Fahrenheit 911, which Disney forced Miramax to dump. Lions Gate picked it up and helped make it the highest grossing documentary ever made.). But when they get their hands on smaller movies with Oscar potential, like Il Postino or Ararat, there is something Americanized and phony about them. They become greeting card movies. On the Miramax mixing board, the "enchanting" knob goes to 11.

One of Miramax's better recent releases that nevertheless exhibited signs of this phenomenon is Finding Neverland, the story of how Scottish novelist JM Barrie created the character Peter Pan. The film is charmingly well-realized by German-born director Marc Forster (Monster's Ball). And Oscar nominee Johnny Depp is also quite good, even if it's his most workmanlike and least interesting performance. In the film, early 20th century author Barrie befriends widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) and her four sons. Barrie, having lost a brother when he was a youngster, sees in these kids the sibling camaraderie he never had. He begins to spend excessive amounts of time with Sylvia and her boys, to the detriment of his marriage to Mary (Radha Mitchell). The boys' imagination and childlike glee inspire him to create Peter Pan, his greatest and most enduring work.

Finding Neverland is a bright and sweet movie with a central point that can never be overstated: you have to grow old, but you don't have to grow up. It's a film to savor, as long as you don't remind yourself of what's not being said. The movie never tackles its two most obvious subjects: did Barrie have any sinister designs on the children and did he have an affair with Sylvia? In the Miramax tradition, this seems like a conspiratorial attempt to ignore some difficult questions, lest we lose any of the film's Oscar-baiting charm and winsomeness. Indeed, dramatizing the actual events would be quite un-Disney-like; scholars contend that after Sylvia's death, Barrie altered her will so he could take custody of the boys. Also, two of the brothers eventually committed suicide.

But Finding Neverland ignores the grit and goes for the soft approach. It takes a sliver of Barrie's psyche and expands on it, ignoring everything around it. There's really nothing wrong with that (especially when pulled off this wonderfully), but it does play into the company's previously enumerated faults. Like most Miramax movies of this type, it's intended to hypnotize the audience into a state of bliss; it floats six inches above the grass, eyes closed, smile on its face. And I'll be the first to admit, it's a pretty magical place to be for 101 minutes. But when you start to wonder about the willfully overlooked implications of its story, just close your eyes again and smile. Harvey would want it that way.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

I can't remember the last time a DVD transfer so annoyed me. Artificial looking and slightly washed out, the transfer was troublesome enough to take me out of the movie. And this is a terrific film, so it's doubly dispiriting. Granted, the picture is clean, with no print flaws or dirt. And the color palette is moderately wide, ranging from the somber browns of the Barrie's home to the more vivid greens of the park that he and the boys play in. Black levels were very good, but shadow detail suffered in low-lit scenes, exposing some grain. The troublesome part is there's a digital artificiality to the picture that I didn't like at all. Faces seemed too smooth and flat and some of the more vibrant colors looked less than real. Detail was okay, but seemed a victim of this forced sheen. The fantasies sequences faired much better, looking terrific. Overall, the 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer was scrubbed down to a fine shine, which is exactly the problem. It's so clean, it looks fake.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The Dolby Digital 5.1 track shows nice separation and action in the front, but not much in the back. Dynamic range is average; the lower-end is never put through its paces, while the upper range (especially the Oscar winning score) sounds clean and sharp and never brittle. The side channels mainly support the front, with various sound effects and lines of dialogue their main contribution. Dialogue is easy to understand. Barrie and his wife sometimes talk in low, whispery tones but they're never hard to hear. The fantasy sequences give the mix its only chance to shine. And it sounds much more aggressive and enveloping then the rest of the mix (which makes thematic sense, since Barrie's interior life is more dynamic than his real life). It's a natural-sounding, quality mix that never overachieves.

There are also Spanish 5.1 and French 5.1 tracks, plus English, Spanish and French subtitles.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Some of these extras are so light and fluffy you can use the DVD as a pillow.

Director Marc Forster, producer Richard Gladstein, and writer David Magee sit down for an informative and conversational audio commentary. They're quite honest regarding what liberties were taken to make Barrie's life cinematically doable. They also talk of improvisation, which was so tastefully achieved that nothing in the film looks remotely improvised. They also make the startling admission that the title Finding Neverland was one of many they considered and was hardly their favorite.

The Magic of Finding Neverland starts with a voice over narrator who says, in his most stentorian voice, "join us as we travel behind the scenes . . ." a line that DVD intelligencia can roughly translate as "here's a studio fluff piece that blows." At first we learn that the original Peter Pan remains "one of the most enchanting and magical stories of all time." Johnny Depp calls it a "work of pure genius." Wow! The things you learn on DVD documentaries. There are some vintage sketches of Peter, which are pretty terrific, and there are also stills from the original London production, which are great to freeze frame and check out. The filmmakers are all interviewed, but they have very little to say. Here's my major bone, however: there's a nice long clip from Johnny's Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean, a film from Disney. There's also a nice long clip from Depp's Chocolat, a film from Miramax, which is, as of this writing, owned by Disney. And wait, Winslett's considerable acting talent is shown in clips from Heavenly Creatures and Iris which are both Miramax releases. Of course, Depp's performing prowess is on display in a clip from Once Upon a Time in Mexico, a Dimension release. Dimension is the genre arm of Miramax. This brings us back to Finding Neverland, a film from Miramax, which is owned by Disney. So let's thank the makers of The Magic of Finding Neverland for pulling out all the stops to provide DVD rental suggestions suitable for lining Disney's pockets. As for the rest of the featurette's content, everyone enjoyed working with everyone and everything was amazingly perfect. Skip it.

Creating Neverland is a three-minute look at how the visual effects were done. The film does have its share of special effects, including the wonderful fantasy scenes. Visual Effects producers are interviewed talking about the motion control work. There is a brief, but effective sequence showing how a theater filled with only 150 people was made to look completely sold out. It has the making of a good piece, but it's too short.

On the Red Carpet is another two- minute fluff job about how the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival to "a magnificent reception." Footage of Depp, Winslett, and (of all people) Hillary Clinton walking the carpet is included. The full screen footage looks colorful and clean.

There are three Deleted Scenes, totaling about two-and-a-half minutes. One of them fleshes out the tension between Barrie and his wife, a dynamic I enjoyed in the film. The second is a quickie where Barrie tells Michael why he's never had kids. The final outtake is an exchange between Barrie and Sylvia. The clips look very clean, but feature the same washed out look as the film. These deleted bits can be viewed with or without audio commentary from Marc Forster, producer Richard Gladstein, and writer David Magee.

Finally, we have five minutes of outtakes. This collection is above average, if only because outtakes from a Victorian drama are funnier than outtakes from a comedy. Plus, Johnny Depp is watchable and fun, even when he's screwing up. Picture quality here is good.

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

There are no DVD-ROM features on this DVD.

Final Thoughts