Film #079 - James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Given how much I love The Nightmare Before Christmas and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I really expected to enjoy James and the Giant Peach a lot more than I did. The problem with Roald Dahl (author of the original book) is that he had a very dark view of life and it’s really hard to balance a desire to be true to that view with a need to entertain an audience. The original film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Willy Wonka) did this really well. But James fails to allow the audience to bond with either the boy (Paul Terry) or his animal friends. This leaves us only rooting against his evil aunts (Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margolyes) instead of rooting for him. And that’s not enough basis for a film.
The look of the film is pretty strong, with obvious comparisons to Nightmare (including a cameo by Jack Skellington as a pirate). But while the set design work terribly well, there are issues with some of the characters. James looks fine. His cartoony appearance is a perfect adaptation of his real-life appearance, just animated. (Although he does bear a striking resemblance to John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten.) The bugs, on the other hand, are a mixed bag. The Grasshopper (Simon Callow) looks fine, as does the Ladybug (Jane Leeves) and the Earthworm (David Thewlis). But the Centipede (Richard Dreyfuss) is off-putting and that’s not good for a character of such import. Miss Spider (Susan Sarandon) is a difficult one, because she looks fine as a character, but has a face that just doesn’t look much like a spider to me.
Structurally the film has problems, too, much of which stems from the source material. This is another story where the lead character is just heaped upon with misfortune. It gets really wearying about half-way in and I was sorry to have to wade through more of it at the end. To make matters worse, a “happily ever after” ending seems awfully incongruous compared to what came before.
I really wanted to like James and the Giant Peach. It was from Disney, it was directed by Nightmare’s Henry Selick, it was based on Dahl. But it just never came together for me. Perhaps naturally, it reminded me of the failure of The Corpse Bride to live up to it’s pedigree. I guess the magic of The Nightmare Before Christmas will just never be repeated and I should stop expecting it to be because it never will.