James and the Giant Peach (1996)
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James and the Giant Peach Movie Review
James and the Giant Peach is a 1996 live-action/animated musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick. It’s a solid Disney outing.
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“You, sir, are an ass!“
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This is a Roald Dahl story so obviously it has a lot of his signature whimsy as well as a lot of goofy, authentic charm to it. I have to be honest and say that I really did not care for this movie when I first saw it five or so years ago. But now I changed my mind quite a bit, and I deem it perfectly solid for now, if nothing truly remarkable.
This is one of those children’s flicks where you really need to put yourself in the mind of a child to be able to fully appreciate it because the movie is obviously very childlike. Some of it was too much for me such as all of the characters spelling out their emotions. That really frustrated me, and made it look rather childish and difficult for adults to get into.
But some of the other things are more childlike than childish, and those I fully appreciated. I am talking about the world building in particular which is very remarkable as the world the child goes into is so imaginative, and the stop–motion animation shines through and through. Those parts made the movie pop, and I wish the rest of it was as good.
Yes, everything with the two aunts felt overly silly, and simply too over-the-top to be taken seriously. That premise alone is bad, and they should have changed it entirely. The kid is also rather forgettable himself, but the animal characters are the highlights with Mr. Centipede and Miss Spider being the most memorable standouts.
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James and the Giant Peach is a very short movie, and it doesn’t feel like it because some stretches are rather dull and slowly paced. The mid parts are the greatest as those are the most imaginative but the beginning is awkward in how it doesn’t properly make you hooked into the story whereas the ending itself is standard. But overall, it’s one of those movies which get much better upon second viewing.
James and the Giant Peach has a weaker first act and some overly childish and/or silly sequences, but overall it’s a perfectly solid movie which benefits from the typically whimsy charms of Roald Dahl storytelling and a particularly stellar world building with terrific stop-motion animation.
