James and The Giant Peach****

James (age 6):***** I liked the rhino and the shark attack. And when the icicles were hanging from the seagull. And I liked when smokey clouds came out of the rhino. And the bugs almost got eaten by the robot shark. And when the robot shark shot a wire into the peach. And I liked it when Centipede was almost cut in half by the pirates.

Jupiter (age 4):***** I like James and his bug friends. And I liked it when he said, "The Peach." He said, "Go ahead and eat some." It made me feel happy. I hated the rhino because it ate James' parents. I like it when James first becomes friends with the bugs. I liked it when one of the bugs was hungry and Ladybug gave him something to eat. I like it when James and the spider save Centipede. I'm going to tell Penelope all about it. Mom, can we keep that movie?

Justice (age 2):*****Five stars, awesome. I like the rhino and the shark. Mom, you know what I like?...I don't know. (disappointment in voice, at her lack of ability to communicate.)

Mama:** James and the Giant Peach is a Harry Selick movie, so it has a similar creepy aesthetic to a "Nightmare Before Christmas," but less goth, and not quite as good. The movie starts with James' idyllic life with his sweet parents. It's almost standard, isn't it--that a child must be orphaned, or at least one parent should die early in the movie. It gaurantees a plot, the kind where the stakes are highest--a child is in jeopardy. Sure enough, James becomes orphaned, but there was something almost whimsical about the vagueness with which these parents are removed: the narrator simply says James' mother and father were killed by a rhinocerous. This kept it from being emotional for my kids, who had just survived the death of Babe's mother several weeks ago. Unlike "The Wizard of Oz," the beginning and end of the this movie (the live action part) was far creepier than the magical world James enters. The abusive aunts were made up so garishly, they could have been from Oz. The sets and situations seemed claustrophic to me, but I have to say these kids were glued to this movie. James was unblinking. Jupiter forgot to eat her popcorn. Justice was riveted, her brow furrowed through the entire movie.



Popi:***I'm with Mama that you've got to give an extra star when all the kids are gung ho. As far as stop motion goes, this one has some amazing sequences, the best in my opinion being when the peach is in the heavens, and the grasshopper begins a celestial musical number. The story, though, was a little episodic for me, and didn't have the totality of vision or character based storylines of Nightmare Before Christmas or The Curseof the Wererabbit. Lots of imagination, though, and the kids loved it. Looking forward to Coraline from Selick!