Review of James and the Giant Peach (1996) by Robben M — 22 Oct 2009

Henry Selick's incredible anything-goes adaptation of Roald Dahl's story of the same name is fantastical and wonderfully so. In the hands of a lesser artist it would've become possible insane or maybe too saccharine. Instead, JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH is enchanting, surreal, melancholy, and utterly uplifting in the end.

The film opens in an impossibly idyllic and obviously artificial set of a beach and lighthouse where our hero, James Henry Trotter is living a happy life with his loving parents.

The film's style is established, as we get expressionistic set design, colors and acting.

Immediately the story takes a turn for the dark as James' parents are mysteriously and abruptly "gobbled up" by a monstrous rhino that flies through the sky as black clouds and lightning.

Is it real? Or is it James' repressing horrible memories? It doesn't matter. As the narrator states, he now lives, with AUNTS.

Specifically, Aunt Spiker and Sponge, who are so utterly evil that it becomes comical. Spiker is tall and thin, her face deathly pale from too much makeup, her teeth yellow. Sponge is fat, with warts and a spilling belly. They work James' to exhaustion, insult him frequently, let him sleep in a cold room, and feed him rotten fish heads.

They live on a ridiculously zig-zagged home on the tip of a black hill, where the skies are always gray and no one is ever happy, James' especially.

At this point, you either buy it, or not. Selick doesn't much care if you think it appropriate or not. This is a fantasy, and it's treated as such. James' will break out into song whenever necessary, singing heartbreaking melodies by Randy Newman, saying all his worries to a friendly but terrifying looking spider.

Cue magical old man played by Peter Postlewaite, covered in watches and pronouncing he has the answers for James' miserable life. James' always dreamed of going to New York, just as his parents promised. The old man gives him a bag full of crocodile tongues, and they must never be released, for "marvelous things will happen" to anything they come in contact with.

Invariably, James' drops the bag and, magically, a peach appears on the dead tree, and then it grows...and grows...and grows...until it's impossibly huge.

Spiker and Sponge characteristically don't care how such a magical occurrence came to pass, and instead, exploit this miracle for money, selling tickets for anyone who wants to see the giant peach.

And then one night, James' enters the peach, through magic, accidentally swallowing one of the errant crocodile tongues. He transforms into a stop-motion animated boy and then the film becomes complete and total fantasy.

We discover that inside the peach are other denizens of the earth who've been effected by the magic: the boisterous centipede with a Brooklyn accent (Richard Dreyfuss, who is fantastic), the motherly ladybug, the very proper and fatherly grasshopper, the deaf glow-worm, the pessimistic earthworm, and the sultry, solitary spider, wearing a beret and speaking with a vaguely french accent.

With these strange companions, James' finds kindred spirits who are outcasts and become friends. They go on adventures in the peach, in hopes of reaching the dreamland of NEW YORK CITY. They come across horrible trials and tribulations, one of the most memorable being the attack at sea by a monstrously large metal machine shark which shoots harpoons as well as platters of rotten fish (!).

They also come across a boat full of skeleton pirates at the bottom of the frozen sea. A sunken ship has the bust of Spiker and Sponge in a horrific grimace. Jack Skellington makes a cameo, this time as a villainous skeleton captain.

There's frequent musical interludes which are delightful. There's plenty of toe-tappers and hummable tunes, deliberately simple and sincere. They never come off as too corny and the film never falls into the trap of characters just moving from one song to the next. Selick takes great pains to at least ensure some sort of momentum for the audience.

In the end, it becomes hard not to imagine the film as changing from live action to stop-motion, as it works all the way. By the end, it's a complete fantasy and dream, so utterly unrealistic but uplifting that it doesn't matter. This is a fairy-tale, and even though there are many dark moments and terrible times, the hero wins in the end, finding his dream family and home, where evil is finally vanquished and he can spread goodness now.

Looking back at it now, I see it as a classic fantasy, in the vein of the Wizard of Oz. It's totally unabated by time and culture, seemingly capturing a swirling energy that must've been in the air at the time for Selick. After all, it wasn't too long after his first masterpiece, A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

Above all, it's messages are told with clarity and without condescension. After all, how else to show children the horror of the world? Spiker and Sponge are the cruelty that is pervasive and the rhino is evil and fear given flesh. James' escapes by literally creating his own world, holding onto his innocence while also destroying the evil in his own way.

Despite all this, it's a delightful and utterly cute film, one that holds up very well, perhaps more so now. And if nothing else, one can admire the constant artistry on display in every frame of this beautiful film.