"Finding Neverland" Inspires Us to Take Creativity As a Healing Force Seriously

You gotta be real careful about movie recommendations from friends. There are only like two or three people who I trust completely with movie choice and selection. If they say it's a good movie, it's a good movie. If they say it's a bad movie, it's a bad movie. The best kind of friends are the kind that understand your taste. I remember this one time, my buddy Jon had just gotten back from seeing the movie "We Were Soldiers." He said, "It was good. You should read about it. But you probably couldn't watch it."

I'm not good with violence. Gives me nightmares. I'm ultra-sensitive to that, for some quirky reason. So that's good advice.

Another buddy of mine, Jeremy, once described the movie "Zoolander" to me with such gusto, that I fell out of my booth at Outback Steakhouse. We watched the movie that night. I laughed so hard, I nearly cried.

"There's got to be more to like than being really, really, really, really, really, really good-looking."

This doesn't mean, however, that every movie I like, they like. For example, two of my close friends hated the movie "Anchorman" whereas I thought it was hysterical. Mindless. Yes. Funny. Oh, yes. (note: I saw it in movie theatres, however, at it was rated PG-13. So if you rent the UnCut version on DVD, it might be raunchier, and therefore, less funny.)

There was one scene, when the male newscasters are complaining about hiring a woman. One of the anchormen, in an attempt to articulate reasons why women shouldn't be journalists says:

"I hear their period attracts bears."

I laughed like a hyena. That's just funny.

I say this because I finally took the advice if one of my friends, Jonathan Ziman, and saw the movie "Finding Neverland" last night. My wife had been bugging me, but I didn't want to. Now, for me, the words "Neverland" conjure up sleepovers at Michael Jackson's house, which is creepy. So I didn't want to see it. Then Jonathan told me he really liked it.

So I watched it.

For some reason, now that I'm a father, movies about children and their relationships with their parents affects me in a deeper place. Before, I was like, "Wow, that's sad" and I'd feel it, but only a little. Now, watching that movie with Justus in his bouncy seat by my feet, I could barely keep from crying. There's a scene where the four boys of the household are jumping up and down on their beds. Their mother, in an attempt to get them to settle down says, "Last one in bed's a rotten toad."

James Barrie, Johnny Depp's character leans against the door and says:

"Young boys should never be made to go to bed. They wake up a day older, and before you know it, they're grown."

Barrie believed that the imagination was a way to provide meaning and substance and purpose in this world, that can be so filled with disappointment. His story of Peter Pan, the boy that refused to grow up, is a beautiful metaphor for that which we all long for: a place free of problem, aging, death and disease. A place of joy.

Barrie created joy for those around him. The movie helped me realize that's a big part of my job as a husband and a father.

And a big part of my role as a Christian.