ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604150108
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 12 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
Is it my imagination or are children's movies getting better?
Doubtless, I'm still swept up in the magic and inventiveness of "James and the Giant Peach," the movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's beloved book by the same name.
When news got out that this movie was another Tim Burton product - through Walt Disney Pictures - it was hard not to react with some trepidation. After all, Burton's movies tend to be more weird than wonderful. Sometimes, as in "Batman Returns," his images are just too grotesque and terrifying for children. It's hard to forgive him for the ending of that movie which has all the little children of Gotham City filing zombie-like through the dark streets to their deaths at the hands of the Penguin.
And then there were those nauseating fish-eating scenes.
Directorial duties for "James and the Giant Peach" were handled by Harry Selick, who also directed "A Nightmare Before Christmas" - another Burton conception. While this movie looks a lot like "Nightmare," it moves so quickly and lightly that it never bogs down the way "Nightmare" did. Still, it retains the twisted, sometimes macabre humor of Dahl's work - which is what children love so much about his books.
This is the story of a little boy named James (Paul Terry) who must go to live with his awful aunts Spiker and Sponge after his parents are killed by a rampaging rhino. (No, the deaths are not shown.) These two are true stepmonsters, and they make a slave of James, giving him fishheads to eat and a dusty attic room in which to sleep.
But James is a sweet, hopeful soul who even makes friends with a spider that happens to build a web in his room. His kindness is rewarded by a mysterious man (Peter Postelthwaite) who gives him a bag full of sprightly, iridescent green seeds that will "make their magic with whatever they meet first."
What they meet first - by accident - is an old, dead tree in the aunts' stony front yard. A peach springs to life on one of the tree's gnarled boughs, and grows and grows and grows.
When James crawls through a hole in the peach's side, he leaves his nightmarish "real life" world and enters the magical world of six giant-sized insects - and the movie shifts to animation.
What follows is an adventure by sea and by air - then undersea and finally, back to earth. The story has been altered slightly to provide a little more dramatic tension. But it is essentially the same, strange and wonderful Dahl tale of a little boy who believes in himself, faces down his worst fear and makes his own dream come true.
Worst-case scenario: Your kids will start bringing (more) bugs into the house as playmates. Best-case: They'll love the movie and - cross your fingers - ask you to take them to the library.
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James and the Giant Peach
*** 1/2
Rated PG (because it may be a little too scary for children under 4), a Walt Disney Pictures release, showing at Cinema USA Crossroads and Salem Valley 8, 80 minutes.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 'James and the Giant Peach' doesn't bog down like someby CNBof Tim Burton's other movies. color.