User reviews

James and the Giant Peach is a stop motion/live action adaptation of the late Roald Dahl's book in the early 60s when being transitioned into film (like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, The Witches, Matilda, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox) about a young boy named James, who climbs into the peach and meets anthropomorphic stop-motion insects and stumbles upon an adventure of a lifetime. Many critics and fans of Roald Dahl alike were amazed about how faithful this movie was to the book, but there are two problems that I do have with this adaptation.

1) The beginning was quite dark and might frighten younger kids along with other scenes.

2) The rhino in the sky and the scene where James battles it wasn't explained enough. That's it for the criticism.

The positive aspects of this movie were excellent. The live action sets and the stop-motion animation have an astounding charm to the book. The character designs are pretty unique and the Jack Skellington cameo as the captain of the skeletons was amazing. The acting is very superb. The stop-motion insects were good, the two mean aunts named Spike and Sponge were tolerable, and the main character James is very likable. Even the action is very good. Music/songs written by Randy Newman (The Toy Story trilogy, The Princess and the Frog) were surprising good. Although not a masterpiece, James and the Giant Peach is an enjoyable family entertainment that stays faithful to the story from a great author.

8/10

True, it isn't as good as the book, which is a childhood favourite of mine, but it is still a delightful and charming film. The look of the film is splendid, with bright colours in most scenes and some very memorable scenes such as the killer sharks, and the peach was stupendous. The script is very clever and funny, especially with Centipede, who has some truly hilarious lines. The performances are exceptional, Paul Terry is very appealing as James and Pete Postelthwaite delights as the mysterious man, who is responsible for changing James's life forever. There is also a terrific voice cast, including Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon and David Thewlis who breathe fresh air into the screenplay, but it is certainly Miriam Margoyles and Joanna Lumley as the ghastly aunts who steal the show. I do however have two complaints of the film. I did find Randy Newman's songs forgettable, and they occasionally mar the film's pacing, and Paul Terry's singing voice just was a bit weak. Other than that, it is a delightful film, with an 8/10. Bethany Cox

As a child James and the Giant Peach was one of my favorite books, so it was interesting to see how it would be formatted into a film. They actually did a pretty good job, although the book is much better. The animation was nicely done, and I liked the way the characters changed from life form to animated form- it gave the film a real surreal type of film. The songs were quite poor, and were obviously aimed at the kids to 'liven' things up a bit, after all some may say the story ventures on the dark side of things. It's nice to see a film aimed at children that can also appeal to adults as well, although it does help that many of us are very familiar with Roald Dahl's stories. In summary quite a good effort.

I really enjoyed it, and so did my 3- and 5-year-old (and yes, we read the book). The animation and live-action scenes showed a lot of love. Though elements of the story seemed a bit hurried or neglected, they weren't anything a fairy-tale fantasy couldn't absorb in stride. The music works well enough for this non-fan of musicals, and I prefer serviceable and inoffensive tunes to the treacly jingles and melodramatic scores of the usual Disney classics.

My only real complaint would be with the ending, as it really is unclear how the aunts drove across the ocean (did they obtain their own crocodile tongues?), and the slice of NY upon landing has a grim, Munchkin-town quality. Still, everything up to that point has left you with lots of goodwill towards the movie's makers.

I remember that I first learned of Roald Dahl's "James and the Giant Peach" when I saw a stage production of it, shortly after which I read the book. I liked both very much. The movie version isn't any kind of masterpiece, but still worth seeing as a way to pass time. I always find it interesting when years later I see who all does the voices: Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon and David Thewlis, to name a few (Miriam Margoyles also stars).

So, I would say that this movie does have a Tim Burton feeling (Roald Dahl plus Tim Burton; imagine that!). As long as we understand that this is pretty much intended as a children's movie, it's quite enjoyable.

The visual style is a bit "freaky" and the characters are a bit offbeat but that gives it some charm. I loved the banter between all the different insects who have a rivalry but are all good people. Their adventure is very engaging. The only downside is that sometimes the film is a bit over the top which makes it hard to empathise with James because his struggles can seem a bit comedic.

It's very sweet and cute, but kind of gets a bit stale/boring after some time. Those two aunts were absolutely disgusting in every way. And I really loved when he sang my name is James. That was so sweet, emotional and adorable.

There is sooo much I like with this movie. It has imagination, a sense of wonder and characters you either love or hate. And the blend of live action and stop-motion animation is a delight. The songs incorporated in this story is not very memorable but sweet and fit their purpose. And you simply have to love to hate Margoyles and Lumley in their parts as the aunts from hell. They treat poor James so horribly that I thought that "Cinderella had it easy"! Compared to "nightmare before Christmas" I actually liked this movie better. It has more of a heart even if the story itself may be just a bit less interesting and inventive. There are so many good scenes but among the highlights is the arctic adventure and the New York sequence. But, mind you, the opening is very deceptive and might scare younger parts of the audience. Otherwise, a must-see!!!

The team of Henry Selick and Tim Burton ("The Nightmare Before Christmas") was the right choice for adapting this Roald Dahl book, or any Roald Dahl book for that matter, to the screen. What Dahl needs is someone who can appreciate the dark and morbid humor to be found in his stories -- they DON'T need to be given the sanitized Disney treatment.

Still, this is only a so-so version of the book, one of my absolute favorites when I was a child. The animation is cool, but there was no way the filmmakers were going to be able to compete with my childhood memories of reading this book over and over again.

It's probably not even fair for me to review the movie for that very reason.

Grade: B

I wanted to watch this movie for a while. There are not many around animated this way and I did love The Nightmare before Christmas and Coraline. So, I finally gave it a try. I was not particularly impressed. I found the story somehow bland and uninspiring. Also, any little moral message in it is basically lost in a number of events that I presume are supposed to be exciting but are rather dull. The songs are not really bad, although they don't save the film. Perhaps I'm just too old for this, although I still love other family films like the ones mentioned at the beginning. I find this film just OK, I wouldn't watch it again.

The 1996 Disney filmization of Roald Dahl's first book for children, 1961's "James and the Giant Peach," is a delightful confection that, like its original, should prove as much fun for the adults as the kiddies. The film hews fairly closely to its source material, with some important differences, and really is quite the exemplar of modern-day animation arts. In it, we are introduced to James Henry Trotter, an orphaned boy whose miserable existence with his two witchlike aunts takes a decided turn for the better when a mysterious old man gives him a bagful of magical green crystals. These crystals cause the previously barren peach tree in his front yard to grow the titular giant fruit, and James soon meets, inside the stone of the fruit, six new friends, giants all: a grasshopper, a spider, an earthworm, a glowworm, a ladybug and a centipede (the book's silkworm character, for some reason, has been omitted). The seven make a hazardous trans-Atlantic journey to NYC aboard the peach, a journey that tests the mettle of each of the team indeed. The film differs from Dahl's book in that the journey to NYC is a goal, rather than a happy accident. The film also tones down the book's violence (James' aunts are not killed in the film), turns the shark into some kind of killer robot, and, most unwisely, drops the entire sequence with the Cloud Men in favor of a haunted pirate ship not at all present in Dahl's text. The nature of the rhino that ate James' parents is also, strangely, much altered. The filmmakers have added some musical numbers to the mix, and although Randy Newman's charms are usually lost on me, I found his five contributions here to be quite entertaining. The picture blends live action, stop-motion animation and what looks to be (in James' dream) animated collages seamlessly and effectively, and the whole production really is something of a technical marvel. Despite the changes, this is one very winning entertainment indeed.

I was surprised that people thought this film was average, or so-so. I found it to me a movie that was so much fun to watch.

Starts out live-action, than it seagues into stop-motion animation. Some of the scenes are very memorable (the pirate attack) and the voices are delightful. Not as good as Nightmare Before Christmas, but every bit as imaginative.

An orphan with terrible aunts for guardians, befriends human like bugs who live inside a giant peach, who take the boy on a journey to New York City.

Although I am not the biggest fan of "Nightmare Before Christmas", I love the aesthetic that Tim Burton and Henry Selick have. We get another taste of that here. Selick directs, Burton produced... it may be a bit less Burtonesque because it is based on a Roald Dahl book, but I feel like some of their sensibility still got in there, especially with the aunts.

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, praising the animated part, but calling the live-action segments "crude." I would have to agree with that. I liked the live-action bits, but they seemed out of place and it might have been best to go full-animation.

I watched this movie because somewhere I ran into comparison with Nightmare Before Christmas. It is far from bad movie, but Tim Burton is just a producer here and comparing this with movies Burton wrote and directed is nothing but blasphemy. My main objection to this movie are pretty much boring songs. It's unbelievable that this movie was nominated for Best Music Academy Award. Out of all Disney animated movies I saw so far this one has definitely the worst soundtrack and not even one song that became evergreen hit. Overall, I have no objections, but no commendations either. Average Disney flick suitable for children only.

6/10

They don't really make kids films like these any more, and u can't say that it's a bad thing. This movie is weird, trippy, and unsettling.

James and the Giant Peach may not have the cult status of Nightmare Before Christmas, but, aside from mixing live-action bookends with the all-animated center of the film (not a great idea; should have been all-animation), it's a faithful and wonderful adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic dream-like story. The animation is superb, the voice talent wonderful (Susan Sarandon's sexy Eastern European Miss Spider takes the cake), and, as Time Magazine said, the film in many ways surpasses the book. Though there are flaws in the screen story by Karey Kirkpatrick, their effect on the overall emotional ride of the film is negligible. After seeing it again recently (first time in several years), I was amazed at what an incredibly beautiful film it is, beautiful colors and design and effects like teacup clouds and the cloud rhino. I especially loved the mechanical shark and the ships' arctic graveyard sequence where Centipede redeems himself by diving into the water to find a compass to get the peach back on course. Overall, a great film.

A young boy named James Henry Trotter (Paul Terry) is sent to live with his cruel and vindictive Aunts Sponge (Miriam Margolyes) and Spiker (Joanna Lumley) after James' parents are killed by a rhino. After saving a spider from being killed by his aunts, James is met by a magic man (Pete Postlethwaite) who gives James a bag of magical crocodile tongues that will make his dreams come true only to inadvertently trip and lose them. One of the tongues works its magic on a dead tree on Sponge and Spiker's property that ends up growing a peach to gargantuan size. Sponge and Spiker rake in massive admission fees from their exhibition of the peach, while James is still as miserable as ever. While cleaning up the trash around the peach James eats a piece of it which unbeknownst to him has a crocodile tongue in it and an opening in the peach reveals itself and inside are giant anthropomorphized bugs elegant and dignified Mr. Grasshopper (Simon Callow), abrasive, boastful, but ultimately good-hearted Brooklyn accented Mr. Centipede (Richard Dreyfus), sweet motherly Mrs. Ladybug (Jane Leeves), demure but strong Miss Spider (Susan Sarandon), neurotic and constantly panicked Mr. Earthworm (David Thewlis), and sweet, elderly, and slightly confused Mrs. Glowworm. Following a series of events that results in the peach rolling into the sea with James and the bugs inside it, the group head for New York City (as James' late father had promised him) meeting several surreal encounters along the way.

James and the Giant Peach is an adaptation the 1961 book of the same name by author Roald Dahl. Disney animator Joe Ranft had attempted to convince Disney staff to produce a film based on the book as far back as the early 80s as Ranft had been enamored with the book since reading it as a child. Disney refused due to the expensive animation process as well as the weird subject matter which was very "dreamy" and episodic. Disney eventually acquired the rights in 1992 from Dahl's widow Felicy and began developing the film. Dennis Potter of The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven wrote one of the early drafts but was ultimately rejected due to being too "dark and bizarre" with one sticking point being the shark attack episode having the sharks be Nazis. The final draft is attributed to Karey Kirkpatrick, Jonathan Roberts, and Steve Bloom. Henry Selick was brought on to direct, but there was debate on how to approach the material with Disney skeptical of the stop-motion process and whether the film should be entirely stop-motion. Eventually Selick opted for distinct live-action and stop-motion sequences abandoning the idea that James would be a live-action actor interacting with stop-motion elements (thought some parts do feature such an approach). Upon release, critical reception was positive with many complimenting the creativity of the visuals, characters, and animation, while the story and live-action elements were subject to some criticism. The movie was also an underperformer at the box office opening at number two behind Primal Fear and making $28 million against its $38 million budget, a step down from Nightmare Before Christmas' $50 million. The movie did eventually do better on home video and attained a cult audience that appreciated the weirdness on display, and while there's a lot to admire there's also issues in the storytelling and execution that keep you from being fully engaged.

To start off on a positive note, James and the Giant Peach has a unique look. In contrast to the twisted and dark iconography from Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach has its own visual identity with softer designs, brighter colors, and grander scope and it provides a unique experience separate from Selick's visions of Christmas and Halloween Town from Nightmare. The movie features a wide array of noted character actors providing the voices of the giant bugs and thanks to Selick's animation on the distinctive models as well as the actor's vocal delivery we get a good sense of who these characters are as well as their personalities. Paul Terry's does perfectly fine as James even if he's maybe a little uncertain in his performance, but since he's established as an audience proxy it works for the direction they take. The live-action sequences in the film were and still are slightly divisive and while I can understand why, for the style they go for I think it works. The sets are designed to look deliberately artificial looking but also timeless and there's an attempt to emulate the contrast of something like 1939's The Wizard of Oz, and while it doesn't quite work to that level, it's probably in the same messy but appealing section of something like 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

The writing in the film is probably the biggest issue as it's a very loosely structured narrative with a lot of surreal elements that don't have much internal logic even before James goes on his journey. One such element is the weird recurring motif of a rhino made of smoke and lightning that "gobbled up his poor mother and father" and what's supposed to be sad is just kind of left confusing because it's delivered in a blink of an eye with James' Parents gone within an absurdly short amount of time. The strangeness of James' Parents' death is so headscratching that it kind of makes the rest of the fantastical journey James takes on the peach with robotic sharks and undead pirates seem reserved by comparison. The movie is also a musical but unlike the songs from Nightmare Before Christmas, the soundtrack provided by Randy Newman just isn't on the same level with a lot of the songs feeling very similar to each other and never standing out. Randy Newman writes four songs that appear in the film (and one he sings over the credits) and the songs "My Name is James", "That's the Life For Me", "Eating the Peach", and "Family" just feel like they're here to extend the runtime rather than serve any narrative purpose as they're basically just dead stops in the already loose narrative that don't convey any character information nor sound all that memorable.

James and the Giant Peach has deservedly been recognized for its ambition and creativity, but it's also a slightly messy film with elements that don't come together like they should. While the movie's atmosphere, visuals, and characters have charm to spare, the writing struggles in giving substance to the dream-like episodic nature of the story. While the movie won't be to everyone's tastes it's too unique and strange of an experiment to deprive yourself of.

I can't believe the high rating that the movie "James and the Giant Peach" received. Obviously the people that rated it high have not read the book. Even so, looking at the film from the view of never having read the book, I still think this peach is rotten. For anybody who hasn't read the Roald Dahl book, do it. It is a wonderful story, and the movie pales beside it.

What a pleasant feel good film this little gem is !

After the sugar and sweet opening, including a hair raising song in the very worst Disney Style, Burton and Dahl break in and off we go, on an adventure that is fun and cheeky and in which not all the sharp edges have been blunted, thank Goodness.

Before we can go on a journey with the Giant Peach however, first Little James have to be orphaned. And he is, in a matter of fact voice-over that makes for a surprise element here. A bold way to get the plot in motion, and it works ! Many keep on wandering what or who that rhino was, that took the life of the parents just like that, on a whim. Well, anybody can be swept away by the rhino in the sky, or so the nasty aunties will have you believe anyway...

The visuals are stunning, the dialogues are bubbling fizzing electrical fun and brought wonderfully and lovingly by a great cast, and direction is clear cut, sharp and focused.

A lovely film, that makes you wonder what is Selnick & Burton and what's genuine Roald Dahl.

A splendid film that makes you go out and want to read a great book (again). What more can we possibly ask of a peach?

Hmmm, well ... about that Rhino in the stormy clouds ... Maybe ... If it's based in Britain, couldn't we tempt it to take a holiday somewhere in, say, Bora Bora or the Halls of Montezuma ? The English are quite accustomed to their climate, but their rhino gives us, here in the Lowlands, more than our share of rain and sleet too !!!

A little light on story, though that stop-motion animation is noice.

At just under 1hr 20mins, 'James and the Giant Peach is simply a pleasant to watch flick with a sweet story and excellent animation. Miriam Margolyes and Joanna Lumley as the aunts is great casting, while the voice cast all perform well.

I like it enough, even with the ineffective singing bits. Overall, this 1996 release is, in my opinion, nothing great but nothing bad either.