easy joke?

“Finding Neverland” is, let’s see…the “fictional autobiographical” account of how playwright J.M. Barrie came to create “Peter Pan,” one of the acknowledged classics of children’s literature. It’s also a movie that endeavors to answer the age-old question: what kind of person writes a story filled with fairies, lost boys, and pirates? Easy jokes aside, “Neverland’s” Barrie – as played by Johnny Depp – is a man facing a crossroads in his life. His latest play is a flop, and his marriage to wife Mary has become a cold, impersonal ordeal. Seeking inspiration, he makes the acquaintance of one Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, widowed mother of four sons. Barrie is friendly with Sylvia, but really hits it off with the boys, and begins spending more and more time playing games of imagination at the family’s house, which caused further tension between him and Mary and made Sylvia’s mother, Emma, increasingly suspicious. She, like most of “polite” British society, looks askance at a grown man who spends an inordinate amount of time with someone else’s kids.

What's the meaning of "Easy jokes aside"?