Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more

 

James and the Giant Peach (1996)

Director: Henry Selick

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Made by the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, this has an enchanting, at times ghoulish, appeal. An adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic story, Selick's film may not have made any spectacular technical advance on his previous work (the animated central section is sandwiched by stylised live-action sequences), but, despite a lightness of plot, it most beautifully captures the book's free-floating, fantastic sense of adventure and wonder. Forced into a life of drudgery by his evil aunts Sponge and Spiker (Margolyes and Lumley), orphan James dreams of escape to New York. An old man (Postlethwaite) appears and gives the boy a jigging handful of fluorescent, magical crocodile tongues. A dead peach tree bears a gigantic fruit, and diving Alice-like into its core, James enters a world of strange invertebrates. As his wishes take flight, so does the peach, putting to sea and soaring up in the air, hauled majestically by a flock of tethered sea-gulls. The songs and music have the inimitable signature of Randy Newman.

Author: WH

Time Out Film Guide


  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields





Features

Head trip

Head trip

Fall preview: Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York is one of the most mind-bending films of the season.

Kiss and tell

A director and his star use their personal lives as inspiration. And it isn't self-indulgent. Promise.

Leo rising

Melissa Leo talks about good direction, being <i>too</i> method and how to get ahead in indies.

Top of the World

Documentarian James Marsh turns a wire-walking stunt into high drama.

Harvest feast

Black Harvest reaps the best of black filmmaking, local and international.

Sibling revelry

The Duplass brothers have big plans. Hollywood, beware.

The Goode news

Matthew Goode springs to the defense of the new <i>Brideshead Revisited</i> like a superhero-in-the-making.