Review – Neverwas

I began this viewing wondering why I’d never heard of this movie. Clearly it had a good-sized budget, enough to pay for quality cinematography and buy a handful of big names for the cast. But perhaps that was the problem. The picture sets up as one of those inner child productions that create an elaborate fantasy world realized via hearty doses of expensive effects work. Either they didn’t have the money to pull that off or they deliberately eschewed it, because it never happens here. Instead this is the pretty but grim tale of a psychiatrist (Aaron Eckhart) who returns to work at the mental hospital where his father (Nick Nolte) committed suicide decades earlier. There he encounters two fans – a patient (Ian McKellen) and a childhood acquaintance (Brittany Murphy) – of his father’s work, a children’s book with the protagonist as the Christopher Robin hero. The set-up isn’t bad. It just never goes much of anywhere. Mildly amusing