Ben Davis What a creative and imaginative film, though it's really weird, so prepare yourself if you watch this. I was surprised by how much I actually liked this movie. I mean, I expected it to be good, maybe around a 6/10, but after watching it I'd probably give it a 8/10. The stop motion animation looks really awesome, especially for the time. What I think really makes it stand out though is just how wacky and creative it gets. It serves as an outlet for anything absurd and over the top, while being grounded by a simple story and simple, relatable characters. It does have issues though. There's this song at the beginning of the movie sung by the main kid actor, and I'm not going to lie, it sucked really bad. The kid just couldn't sing and I certainly could have gone without it. Also I don't like the ending. The way it ended left me believing that magic actually did exist in the movie's universe and I thought it would have been a better film if the kid had made it up all in his head to cope with the loss of his parents. Maybe that's a little dark, but it would have been really interesting for a kid's movie to have that underlying tone. Still, it's a pretty great film and it's perfect for the family (except my family, as they all hated it, yet they'll watch The Nut Job and laugh all the way through. Why?).

OllieSuave-007 This is a very carefree and sweet (like peaches) live action/computer animated movie based on Roald Dahl children's novel, James and the Giant Beach.In the movie, James has to go live with his two horrible aunts, Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge, after the death of his parents. After saving a spider, he obtains crocodile tongues in his garden and an enormous peach grows from it. In the peach, he meets animated versions of the spider he saved earlier and a host of other multi-legged animals including the Centipede, Ladybug and Grasshopper. They help James escape his unhappy home and journey to the City of New York.In this movie, you get some nice memorable characters, interesting stop-motion animation, clever imagination and a catchy song to sing-along with called "We're Family." The rest of the songs and music score were sub-par. The song Paul Terry (James) sings called "My Name is James" is too melancholy and dreary for me, no harmony or melodies, and the actor himself didn't seem fit for the role - lack of emotion and interest.The overall movie did not have the captivating adventures, magic and fun I enjoy from many other animated films; therefore, I've only found the film to be average as far as entertainment is concerned. However, since this film does have the elements of a child's innocence and imagination, this would be a fine film to show to little kids, but not one to sit together to watch with the entire family.Grade C-

Chris Mizerak There seems to be a split reaction from critics and audiences alike when talking about Henry Selick's 1996 stop-motion animated feature "James and the Giant Peach". While the critics (particularly Gene Siskel) highly praise this picture and call it a wonderful children's fantasy, the audiences don't seem to care much for it. Maybe it's because this picture may be too weird for them like many of the films made by Tim Burton, who's one of the film's producers. Personally, I don't know what to make of this film even after seeing it plenty of times except that I can see where both sides are coming from. We follow a young British boy named James (Paul Terry) whose parents were killed by a rhinoceros (don't ask how or why since the picture never explains that). He's forced to live with his two despicable aunts (Miriam Margolyes, Joanna Lumley) where he has to do all kinds of chores (he practically does more work than those two ever seem to do in five seconds), and be humiliated in more ways than one. One day, a mysterious man (Pete Postlethwaite) who "knows more than just his name" gives James a bag of magical "crocodile tongues", which he claims will help put some happiness into his sad life. But when James accidentally lets these magical tongues loose, James and his aunts soon discover a peach on a dead tree that grows so gigantic that it's even bigger than the tree from which it grew on. The aunts plan on using their giant peach as a tourist attraction so they can make good profits off of their discovery, while James still has to continue doing chores. One night, James crawls inside a large hole in the peach and discovers a group of human-sized bugs including a grasshopper (Simon Callow), a centipede (Richard Dreyfuss), an earthworm (David Thewlis), a spider (Susan Sarandon), a ladybug (Jane Leeves), and a glowworm (Miriam Margolyes). Like James, they dream of getting out of his aunt's place in England and heading to New York City where his parents always dreamed of going. And that's exactly what they do through a series of elaborate, fanciful scenarios such as rolling away into the Atlantic Ocean, using Miss Spider's silk to capture and tie a hundred seagulls to the peach stem so the peach can fly, and battling a mechanical shark and skeleton pirates under the icy seas of the Arctic Ocean. Whether you like this children's fantasy or not, there are certain things about the film that you got to give it credit for. For one thing, regardless of how implausible the story can be most of the time, I do respect the creativity and the imagination that was incorporated into this story. I admire how this film had the courage to simply let its imagination run wild regardless of our skepticism and our knowledge that no such scenarios could take place in real life. The stop-motion animation is impressive in its own right particularly with the highly detailed and imaginative character designs. The voice-over work from the likes of Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, and Susan Sarandon are very well done and truly bring these characters to life. The songs by Randy Newman, with the exception of "My Name is James" which I thought had embarrassing lyrics, are pretty solid with the standouts being "Family" and "Good News". Like much of the best films made by the Disney Company, the strength of the film lies in the visuals and the audio. Now, I will say that the storytelling in this film isn't very consistent and is filled with major plot flaws that can't be glossed over. For example, I think that the film's writers made the aunt characters way too evil. If any parents of a child knew they had relatives who treated children the way these two aunts did, they shouldn't have even allowed custody of the child to these people in the first place. Let me put this in another way. Anyone who has relatives who taunt a child over the death of their parents or starve the child to death by feeding them non-food shouldn't just simply pretend they don't exist. They need to have an intervention with them immediately for the benefit of the child. There are also some scenes that don't really go anywhere story wise. For example, the dream sequence with James as a caterpillar being chased by his aunts and the rhino that killed his parents is pretty pointless. To be fair though, there have been dream sequences in other films that are much worse than this, and they at least prepare us ahead of time for that type of scene. While the battles between the shark as well as the underwater skeleton pirates are decent, they both go by a little too quickly and don't leave much of an impact. As long as you leave your common sense and logic out the door, "James and the Giant Peach" will fill the bill just fine as far as family entertainment goes. Kids and adults can admire the creativity of the story, the unique animation in the vein of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993), the colorful characters including the centipede and the grasshopper, and maybe find one or two good tunes out of it as well.

DJ Zurn After The Nightmare Before Christmas, both Henry Selick and Tim Burton began work on another stop motion animated film, a film based on an acclaimed children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. James and The Giant Peach brings in a lot of the same elements as Nightmare, but also brings in many trademarks of it's own. This film brews live action scenes into the pot and is overall more brightly colored and sunny than Nightmare, whose scenes were mostly dark and night like. In my opinion, James and the Giant Peach is one of those films that constantly gets overlooked. While Nightmate gets a lot of recognition and fanatics, this film has a small cult following and when it comes to ranking the world's best stop motion classics, this one usually ranks low on the list or doesn't rank at all. It's a pity, because I think this is one of Selick and Burton's best accomplishments. As Roald Dahl hated the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory from 1971, I think he would have been quite proud of this picture, for it's one of those films that truly represents the mood, the look, and the imagination of the original novel. This film has some of Hollywood's finest either playing live action characters or stop motion characters. We have Miriam Margoyles and Joanna Lumley playing James' dreadful aunts, who are just as hilarious and silly looking as they are intimidating. Lumley's Aunt Spiker character can't go one scene without having her mouth hang wide open or giving off a evil smile, revealing her crooked, filthy teeth. Then there is Pete Postlewaite as the Magic Man who gives James a bag of crocodile tongues. He can have his creepy moments as well, but he overall plays the character as a mysterious figure. He's like the tinkerer from Willy Wonka. You just want to know more about him, but you can't because he's gone before you can wink. Playing James is Paul Terry, who's not known that much nowadays, but has appeared on CBBC's Microsoap series. He's a triumphant young man and his little singing number towards the beginning of the film really highlights his hopes and ambitions and desire to leave his nasty aunts.Playing the stop motion characters are a wide array of actors, actors like Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, even David Thewlis of Harry Potter fame. I think my favorite has got to be Dreyfuss' Centipede character, for he plays him as a slick, snarky, defiant Han Solo like character...with a cigar of course. My favorite scene out of the entire film is the scene depicting James and Centipede's adventure on a pirate ship under the sea. Many Nightmare Before Christmas fans know that this is the scene where the Jack Skellington puppet makes a cameo as the ship's deceased captain, and I think Selick and Burton did a fantastic job making him still retain his trademarks, but also look very different than the way him did in Nightmare.If I had to some up this film in one word, it's look. This film has a look unlike any other film. I said The Nightmare Before Christmas was like a mix between Rankin Bass' Rudolph and the works of Edward Gory, but I think this film combines the looks of Dr. Seuss with Nancy Ekholm Burkert, who illustrated Dahl's original book. Like in Nightmare, many things are rugged, crooked and crude, even the gleaming, sky scraping buildings of New York City. I also think the peach has quite an appeal to it. In several scenes, I just want to reach my hand into the screen and take a huge bite out of it. There is even a song about eating the peach present in the film, and Randy Newman must be praised for his excellent songwriting. James and the Giant Peach is a film that deserves a little more than what it gets. Sure, it's not my all time favorite, but I still hold it very close and love it, love it, love it, love it to pieces. If you want a film that combines stylized live action with fantastic stop motion sequences and odd, yet thrilling wizardry, this is your pot of tea.