“Neverland” recasts “Peter Pan” into modern urban legend. It’s an interesting take, but the film comes across like a first draft.

The pacing is off, and the acting inconsistent. The movie works best when its humor is tongue-in-cheek. My favorite scene introduces the viewer to Hook (Gary Kelley). He’s waxing melodramatic about the importance of his job at a theme park, while trying to fend off amorous overtures from a guy dressed as a crocodile (Kevin Christy).

Unfortunately, most of the movie takes itself too seriously and veers into pretentiousness toward the end.

If you like offbeat, darkish, independent films, I’d recommend this. Otherwise, skip it.

Gay-wise: At the beginning of the film, Peter (Rick Sparks) describes himself as “pansexual,” which to him means, “I like sex.” To me, that conveyed a sense of openness in the film. This is “Peter Pan” for outsiders. A bit later the viewer sees the scene introducing Hook, described above. I’m not thrilled that the bad guy is gay (such a stereotype!), but at that point it seems kind of fun in a subversive way.

Unfortunately, the tongue-in-cheek approach stops there. Hook becomes a gay sexual predator whose ultimate fate follows stereotype, Peter evinces no sexuality throughout the rest of the movie (he’s a little boy who won’t grow up), and the only references to gay people are derisive. For example, the Lost Boys refer to the pirates (Hook’s apparently gay henchman) as “fags,” and Tinkerbell (Kari Wahlgren, my favorite in the movie) tries to demean Peter Pan by suggesting he doesn’t like girls. I’m not impressed.

This movie bills itself as a thriller. It’s not. It’s a family drama with suspenseful elements. The story is not taut enough to qualify as a film made in the Hitchcock tradition (a claim made on the back of the DVD). The implausibilities in the story makes it hard to buy into. I constantly questioned the motives of the characters. I didn’t understand why any of them did the things they did, which distracted me from the suspense.

The main character, Margaret Hall (in a great performance by Tilda Swinton), is an ordinary housewife whose military husband is overseas. She discovers her teenage son (Beau, played by Jonathan Tucker) has an older, scuzzy boyfriend (Darby Reese, played by Josh Lucas) from nearby Reno. The boyfriend comes to their house, he and Beau fight, and the next morning Margaret discovers Darby’s dead body.

The filmmakers say that Margaret reacts based on a protective instinct, which leads her to behave recklessly. Apparently believing her son killed the man during their argument, she disposes of the body. She otherwise comes across as quite level-headed, so this action is out of character for her.

And then she doesn’t pursue the matter with her son. She asks him what happened the previous night, but he’s reluctant to talk about it (she had asked him not to see Darby anymore). And despite the fact THERE’S A DEAD BODY INVOLVED she doesn’t press Beau about it.

The movie is based on a novel that I have not read, so the film may have inherited some of its flaws from the novel. I do know that in the book the dead man is the older boyfriend of Margaret’s daughter. The filmmakers changed the daughter into a closeted gay son, thinking that the lack of communication about his sexual orientation would explain why they don’t discuss this incident.

But that doesn’t make sense to me either – she figures out he’s gay, and she’s not a reticent person. Once a possible murder occurs, why doesn’t she just flat out ask him? In fact, why does she suspect him in the first place? See the spoiler section below for more comments on this issue.

Then some blackmailers enter the picture with a video of Darby screwing Beau. Again, I didn’t understand this. Darby owed these blackmailers money, and they see an opportunity with this apparent murder to extort money from Margaret. Fair enough. But I do not understand the blackmailers’ persistence, even when events fail to go their way.

Beau was clearly not involved in whatever relationship Darby had with the bad guys. They’re just being opportunistic, which bad people will be, but are they really going to murder this ordinary suburban family, risking their criminal enterprise, for a debt that wasn’t even this family’s obligation to begin with?

As for the videotape, if Paris Hilton can become a TV star with her own homemade porn leaked to the public, I think Beau would have survived. If anything, it’s the people with the film of the underage boy having sex who would get themselves in trouble.

Yes, Margaret created a problem for herself when she tried to hide the body without calling the police. That, in conjunction with the video, doesn’t look good. So I acknowledge that Margaret opened the door to the unpleasantness with her own foolishness. But still, the videotape is just too weak a motivator for me to understand why she complies. Once again, at that point, why didn’t she just approach Beau about what happened and go to the police, instead of continuing to assume her son’s guilt?

Most of the movie traces Margaret’s response to this set of circumstances, as well as her attempts to extricate herself and her family from the intrigue.

Overall, the highlight of the film is the acting, especially Tilda Swinton, though all the primary players shine. The technical aspects of the film were also well done. The movie looks very polished with good editing and clever shots. The evolution of Margaret’s relationship with the blackmailer Alek (Goran Visnjic) was also fresh and unusual.

The story, however, disappoints. As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, it may make for an interesting drama but a poor thriller, given its weak plot riddled with holes. If watching a great thriller is like walking a tightrope, this movie was like a stroll through mud.

I did find the gay content in the film interesting. Darby is a cad who dies; he’s both victimizer and victim, so the filmmakers managed to capture two stereotypes in one blow. But on the positive side, Beau is just an ordinary kid who happens to be gay, and his mother still loves him.

And although the gay content starts the film off, once the story gets moving, Beau’s sexuality has little to do with the plot, and none of the other characters are gay. It’s kind of refreshing to see a film whose gay content is significant to the story but not the focus.

Still, since the film works better as a drama, I would have liked to see more direct conversations about it between Margaret and Beau, particularly if it was handled in a fresh way (as opposed to every other coming out movie). That could have added another layer to the story.

** WARNING – Major Spoiler Alert – The following discusses the problematic ending. Do NOT read further if you don’t want to know **

The ending is a let-down. The single question that kept my attention was, what actually happened to Darby Reese? The answer: It was an accident. He literally fell onto an anchor, which pierced his chest. Again, the scriptwriter adapted the movie from a book, so he may have inherited the weak plot.

The story would have been much more interesting, however, if Darby actually had been murdered. Then we’d have not just Margaret dealing with the blackmailers but also trying to figure out who really did it. But it turns out, no one did.

And again I return to my earlier question. Why the hell didn’t she just ask her damn son about it? They could have saved themselves SO MUCH TROUBLE if they’d just figured out it was an accident, called the police, and been done with it!

What might have been an interesting, taut examination of the creation of the CIA and its high-level activities during the Cold War turns into a tedious, plodding, overlong yawner. Poor, self-indulgent editing and drifting storylines rob the movie of drama. Having said that, the movie enjoys some great performances.

Angelina Jolie was perfectly cast as Margaret, a passionate, vivacious woman trapped in a loveless, lifeless marriage. Meanwhile, Matt Damon does an excellent job as Edward Wilson, her husband and a high-level CIA operative, even though he’s given little to work with. Edward is such a bloodless character whose major conflicts are completely internalized that it would be easy for him to come across as bland and un-engaging. But Damon manages to give him subtlety and to seize on those scenes where the character has been given some humanity, such as a moment when Edward (in London) is asking his wife Margaret (in the States) about the color of his newborn son’s eyes.

I can’t really comment on how much the story of the CIA has been fictionalized / dramatized. The movie seems to be a well-researched period piece with exact attention to detail, but I’m not qualified to judge; maybe the screenwriter Eric Roth just has a brilliant ability to incorporate detail into his scripts.

The movie does contain a gay character. Michael Gambon portrays Dr. Fredericks, first seen as one of Edward’s college professors who turns out not to be what he seems. Unfortunately, this character falls into several very negative gay stereotypes, although I have to give Dumbledore, er, I mean, Gambon props: he created an engaging, charming, and three-dimensional character out of a cardboard cutout. In fact, he gave the character a soul, more than most of the characters in the movie. I gave the gay positivity score a .5 bump which I attribute entirely to Gambon’s wonderfully nuanced performance.

Overall 1.5 / 5.0 (not recommended)
Gay Content 1.5 / 5.0
Gay Positivity 1.5 / 5.0

The story follows Danny’s (Thierry Pépin) progression from college student to aspiring model to stripper to porn actor. And truth be told, this movie is a form of porn. It’s not about selling sexual acts, but it’s using beefcake and sexual suggestiveness to sell a weak story. In place of a stronger script and more clever editing, the main character takes off his shirt, hoping to distract the discerning audience with his chiseled torso.

The basic story is sound. Danny is estranged from his father, who is concerned that Danny is going to follow his deceased mother by leading a wild life full of drugs. Danny doesn’t strike me so much as unstable as adolescent. He still has a lot of figuring out to do, and the filmmakers could have made a very interesting, thought-provoking story following that line of thought. They could have done it with the same characters and even many of the same major plot points.

But the presentation is poor. The viewer never really delves deeply into any of the characters. I don’t know any of them, not even Danny, who’s at center stage throughout the whole production. In the same way, many scene transitions felt abrupt, and so did Danny’s growth. The movie tells us at the end that he’s ready for a new start, thanks to the love of Karine (Véronique Jenkins). A revelation that left me thinking, “Where the hell did that come from?”

To my dismay, I understand why this movie was marketed so heavily to the gay community. It’s filled with beautiful young men baring all (in a couple of full-frontal scenes, and a plethora of shirtless shots). Some characters are strippers catering to a gay audience. Two male characters (Greg, played by a smoldering Jessie Beaulieu, and Danny) share a brief, homoerotic moment. And Danny’s father (Eric Cabana), a minor character, is gay. So yes, there are a number of elements of peripheral interest to the gay viewer.

But none of the main characters are gay, and Danny’s father barely appears in the film. The storyline is not gay; in fact, Danny is “saved” from self-destruction by falling in love with a woman, Karine. The one brief homoerotic moment leads to nothing except an apology. The word “fag” (or, more specifically, the French equivalent) is used liberally, and in a soliloquy, Danny reveals that being gay was so terrible for his father, that THEY HAD TO MOVE, because they were just that reviled by the community where they lived.

And in fact, the sole gay character is slightly unhinged (as when he chokes his son) and clearly wounded (alone for fifteen years, withholding affection from his son, and then when his son confesses that he wanted more from his father, the father turns around and tells him, ‘I’m putting myself first now.’) No, not a gay positive film.

Overall 3.5 / 5.0 (recommended)
Gay Content 1.5 / 5.0
Gay Positivity 4.5 / 5.0

A pleasant if bland diversion. The plot is mostly chick-flick formula with few surprises. The director is obviously counting on the beautiful cinematography and an engaging performance by Diane Lane (playing the protagonist, Frances) to carry the film.

This discovering-oneself-through-foreign-adventure movie recalls the British film “Shirley Valentine.” Middle-aged housewife has marital problems (although why any husband would stray from Diane Lane is beyond me), and friends offer the opportunity to vacation in a beautiful Mediterranean country. While visiting, the woman decides to stay, has a brief romance, attends a wedding, and in the process finds herself.

“Under the Tuscan Sun” is the more polished film, having been produced by a major studio. And yet, while UTTS has a shinier veneer, “Shirley Valentine” offers more heart.

UTTS’s basic story is sound, but some of the subplots are downright corny. The young-people-in-love story, though it served as a counterpoint to Frances’ own romantic foibles, comes across more saccharine than sweet.

Something similar happened with the character of Frances. Lane is a charming actress, but while Frances had a great adventure, I never got the sense that she had really grown as a person. In part, this weakness comes from the writer and director trying to force a feel-good, inspirational vibe onto the story. Other subplots are overdone: Katherine (Lindsay Duncan) is a great character, embodying a life lived fully, but she’s overplayed and as a result becomes more caricature than real person. The movie would have benefited from a lighter, more comedic approach.

As a pleasant surprise, the movie does contain some minor gay content. Frances’ best friend Patti (played by the fantastic Sandra Oh) is a lesbian, and Frances discovers Tuscany while traveling on a gay tour (she herself is straight). Patti’s lesbianism is more artifact (”hey, let’s make this movie contemporary by giving her a lesbian best friend!”) than meaningful, and the characters from the tour (including Dan Bucatinsky of “All Over The Guy” fame) are sweet but definitely bit players. Still, it’s nice to watch a movie with just the casual presence of the gay content.

Overall, if you sometimes wish you could escape into a painting of the Tuscan landscape, this movie is for you. If you want a movie that will inspire, check out “Shirley Valentine” instead. For a fantastic book with a similar theme, I highly recommend “A Different Kind of Country” by Dorothy Oilman (which I actually prefer to the book version of UTTS).

A word of warning – do not expect a movie true to the book. They share a title, and both take place primarily in Tuscany. The similarities end there.