Review of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) by Herman73Trio — 04 Oct 2016

I know Tim Burton's name for the first time when I saw "Batman" (1989) (his work such as Beetlejuice never imported to Indonesia), and I saw several of his outstanding piece of work such as "Edward Scissorhands" "Sleepy Hollow" "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" "Alice in Wonderland" and "Sweeny Todd". From my experience Tim Burton's "peculiar" that he is very strong in visualization. It's kinda like a child's unstoppable wild imagination. So I expected so much from this movie This movie is about a community of human with special abilities that choose an awkward way to live their live, repeat one day life by creating magic loop These humans are children with special abilities that under protection of an adult protector. The film starts with Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield), a regular teenager living in suburban Florida with his awful parents and also a worker in supermarket. Since he was about 4 or 5 years old, he already been told a fantastic adventure story by his grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp), that Abe admit is his real life adventure. As years goes by, Jake's torn apart between his believe in Abe's story and the science that he learn at school that there are no such things as multi tentacle tongue monsters or children with special abilities. But these stories about monsters and "special children" suddenly seem like they might hold some dark truth to them after one night he found out his grandfather Abe killed with both his eyes taken. Before Abe take his last breath, still manage to ask Jake (he always call his grandson Tygritus – Tiger in Polland) to go to Wales and find Miss Peregrine. And the story goes, that finally Jake found the house only to find out that the house already burnt down on Germany bombing in Sep 3rd 1943, driven by his curiosity he entered that house and meet these peculiar children accidentally. These children then brought him to a place and magically he swan his own eyes the same house his grandfather told him about, in the same place that he know that already blown away by Germany bomber plane. Then Jake meet Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) who is capable of transforming herself into a falcon and the ability to manipulated time – which she is not the only one that can do this.Miss Peregrine has been able so far to preserve in an endless cycle (like one of Tom Cruise sci-fi movie "Edge of Tomworrow") the day prior to the fatal bombing by creating secret magic "loops" in exact time. Then Emma (Ella Purnell), the sweet blonde who has to wear lead heavy boot so she doesn't fly away. There's Olive (Lauren McCrostie), the redhead who has to wear gloves cause There's the girl with a ravenous mouth hidden on the back of her head. The invisible boy "Wilard"who likes to play tricks. The 8 years old girl who can make things grow super fast. The 12 years old boy who can use his eyeball to project image and finally the weird masked twins (and wear a weird costume). Frankly I got a very big hope for this movie, that I wish this movie is more then just some human with special abilities torn in good and bad side (oups...does this sound like X Men?), but turn out to be "X-Kids". In my personal opinion this movies shouldn't take 2 hours, because almost one hour the visionary Tim Burton failed to develop mystery chemistry into the mind of audience, even though Tim already succeeded snap my mind through the tragedy of Abe death and the creepy glance of Baroon (Samuel L.Jackson) in the first 15 minutes, but then my curiosity is just like vaporized into the air.

Tim Burton waste to much time to explore things that I think is not even matter to much for this movie that even didn't work well – like the emotional between Emma and Jake or the supper. I think is a bit better if Tim just cut it to the chase where Emma finally proof that to Jake that he also a peculiar kid (Jake can see things what others can't).

If there are things that this movie do is the well done performance of Eva Green as Miss Peregrine. She played the character in such style, and since I and many most of audience in my town never read the book – Eva succeeded gave us a cruel Miss Peregrine in mind, her performance really gorgeous with dark gown, really portray a vigilante, wise and always beware lady killer.And so Samuel L.Jackson, that not just soft lens for evil eyes – as usual his long experience that made all that gesture that he is so evil. The rest? Well, they play along, not bad, but just play along. The action parts? The only thing that still eye catching is the multi tentacle tongue monsters and a little bit surprise the weird twin kids really have deadly abilities.