James And The Giant Peach (DVD)

Straight off the back of writing a review about Matilda, I move onto the secon Roald Dahl film adaptation to come out in 2006: James and the Giant Peach. This animation / film crossover tells the tale of an orphan who is abused by his carers, and befriends the creatures living inside a giant peach, and taken on a journey to New York City. This film is out and out dark and scary, and I really don't think it works as a kid's film. It reminds me of Nightmare before Christmas in the dark and shadowy element it has. I remember watching it with my little bro and thinking 'he's gonna have nightmares!' As with much of Dahl's work, it's overly negative and ...  Read the complete review

James and the Giant Peach is a 1996 film based on the book of the same name, originally penned by Roald Dahl. It features a clever mix of live film and animation, and at a little over an hour long, it is ideal for a child to keep their attention as well as entertain more than just an episode of a TV programme. James is a boy who lives with his horrible aunts Spiker (Joanna Lumley) and Sponge (Miriam Margolyes). Upon discovering a giant peach, James crawls into it and finds and befriends a group of human-like bugs and creepy crawlies, who take him and the peach on an adventure across the big pond to New York City. However, James' two aunts have other ideas for ...  Read the complete review

Based on the book of the same name written by Roald Dahl in 1961, James and the Giant Peach is the story of James Henry Trotter, who after the death of his parents, by rhinoceros no less, is sent to live with his 2 horrible and nasty Aunts Spiker and Sponge. James is mistreated by his Aunts and forced to work all day and starved at night. The only think keeping him going is the thought he might be able to go to New York one day and he always keeps a travel brochure given to him by his Father to hand. One day after rescuing a spider from his Aunt Spiker, he meets a strange man who gives him a present of magic tongues and promises him that marvellous ...  Read the complete review

Henry Selick pioneered the animation world with his visually stunning film A Nightmare Before Christmas (so often wrongly appropriated to Tim Burton, who was merely the Producer, NOT Director), and most recently released the dark and dreamlike Coraline to huge acclaim. In the middle, we get James and the Giant Peach, another visually stunning, and revolutionary work that employed a combination of live action and stop-motion unlike anything that had been seen before. Nevertheless, it never really recieved the acclaim it should have, and is something of a cult animated film, likely because of its idiosyncratic tone compared to films like Toy Story that were released at the ...  Read the complete review