|
james
and the giant peach |
director
Henry Selick
screenwriters
Karey Kirkpatrick
Jonathan Roberts
Steve Bloom
based on
the novel by
Roald Dahl
producers
Tim Burton
Denise Di Novi
cinematographers
Pete Kozachik
Hiro Narita
music
Randy Newman
editor
Stan Webb
cast
Paul Terry (James)
Simon Callow (Grasshopper)
Richard Dreyfuss (Centipede)
Jane Leeves (Ladybug)
Joanna Lumley (Aunt Spiker)
Miriam Margolyes (Aunt Sponge)
Pete Postlethwaite (Old Man)
Susan Sarandon (Spider)
David Thewlis (Earthworm)
mpaa rating: PG
running
time: 79m
u.s.
release: 4/12/96
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other henry
selick films
reviewed on this website:
- monkeybone
- the nightmare
before christmas
|
Did
anyone else out there see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
as a kid and never get over it? That movie and 1990's equally
disturbing (but fun) The Witches came from the twisted
brow of Roald Dahl, who didn't worry about scaring kids any more
than he worried about offending parents. Dahl's books for kids
are cold and vengeful, yet restlessly inventive. If 1995 was
Jane Austen's year, 1996 looks to be Dahl's. This summer promises
Danny DeVito's adaptation of Matilda, and this month offers
James and the Giant Peach, from the same creative team
behind The Nightmare Before Christmas -- director Henry
Selick, producer Tim Burton -- plus character design by children's
book illustrator Lane Smith (The Stinky Cheese Man). Why
such a potential blockbuster has been dumped in the post-Easter
death slot is beyond me. (Unlike Christ, movies that die on opening
weekend don't rise again in three days.) Peach, like Nightmare,
should please all ages: jaded kids as well as jaded adults who
grew up on Rankin-Bass stop-motion TV specials. This is Disney's
true art nowadays, not PC crap like Pocahontas.
In the live-action prologue, little James (Paul Terry) loses
both his parents to a rhino and moves in with his horrid aunts
Sponge (Miriam Margolyes) and Spiker (Joanna Lumley). Life sucks
until James meets a mysterious old-timer (Pete Postlethwaite),
who gives the boy a bag of magic alligator tongues. But the tongues
slip from James' hands, burrowing into the dirt around a tree
bearing a single peach. As advertised, the peach inflates to
asteroidal proportions. Once James enters the peach (a naughty
Dahl-esque joke that has gone over kids' heads since the book's
1961 publication), the movie shifts to Selick's witty animation
and Lane Smith's surreal critters. Among the latter are Old-Green-Grasshopper
(voice of Simon Callow), Ladybug (Jane Leeves of Frasier),
Miss Spider (Susan Sarandon), Centipede (Richard Dreyfuss), and
the neurotic, blind Earthworm (David Thewlis), who's much funnier
than he was in the book.
Selick and the screenwriters (Karey Kirkpatrick, Jonathan Roberts,
and Steve Bloom) beef up some of Dahl's inventions and disregard
others. In the book, a pack of sharks menace the ocean-bound
peach. In the movie, Selick and Smith bring out a fearsome RoboShark,
complete with flying shark-missiles. I did, however, mourn the
absence of Dahl's Cloud Men, and Disney chickens out on the fates
of Sponge and Spiker. Selick spares them; Dahl cackled as he
let the peach squash them flat.
James and the Giant Peach poops out at the end, when the
movie returns to live action; the aunts show up, and James makes
a lame speech about the importance of dreams. But most of the
movie, loyal to the spirit (if not always to the text) of Roald
Dahl, has already made the point. Henry Selick's images are both
lyrical and tactile: You can almost touch and taste that peach
as it floats around, and strange and beautiful things are happening
inside it. |