THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 18, 1996 TAG: 9604180112
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
``JAMES AND THE Giant Peach,'' based on the 1961 children's book by Roald Dahl, is a stunning visual creation that is as inventive as any film that is likely to come along this year.
The plot deals with a lonely British boy who sails to New York aboard a giant peach. Along the way he finds new friends among the bugs inside the peach - the gentlemanly Grasshopper (voice of Simon Callow); the brash Centipede (voice of Richard Dreyfuss); a gentle, motherly Ladybug (voice of Jane Leeves); a ditzy Glow-worm (Miriam Morgolyes); the exotic Miss Spider (Susan Sarandon) and the pessimistic Earthworm (David Thewlis).
And what a whopper of a surreal, scary and yet somewhat enchanted adventure this lot undertakes! James is left orphaned when his parents are run down by a rampaging rhino, and he is farmed out to his wicked Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge. He meets a mysterious old man, played by Oscar nominee Pete Postlethwaite (``In the Name of the Father'') who gives him a bunch of magic ``green things'' which are actually crocodile tongues. When he spills the contents near a bare, old peach tree, a peach instantly appears and grows until it is more than large enough to be called giant.
The aunts charge admission to see it, planning to make a fortune but James crawls inside and takes off for New York City.
Along the way the travelers get off course and are threatened by a mechanical shark. Both the shark and the waves are created by computer imagery while the center 45 minutes of the film is stop-motion animation from the same team that produced the darker and less focused ``Nightmare Before Christmas'' in 1993.
If it all sounds a bit too convoluted, and outright bizarre, for either children or adults to take during one sitting, well, so perhaps did ``The Wizard of Oz'' and ``Alice in Wonderland'' at one time. ``James and the Giant Peach'' is an instant classic in spite of the fact that the releasing studio, Walt Disney, seems to want to shortchange it in the publicity push. It was made by the out-of-town (San Francisco) team headed, in part, by weird producer Tim Burton.
Little 10-year-old Paul Terry is perfect as James - vulnerable but never quite precious. He has enough spirit for the part but still manages to be a real little boy. Susan Sarandon is a stand-out as the sexy voice of Miss Spider.
Randy Newman's five songs are rather mediocre, but perhaps a slight improvement over the songs he wrote for the otherwise inventive ``Toy Story.''
The film is in live-action for its opening and then switches to stop-motion animation when James climbs inside the peach - much in the same way Dorothy turned to Technicolor when she entered the land of Oz.
Visually, and to a large extent, emotionally, the film is a knockout. ILLUSTRATION: ``James and the Giant Peach''
Cast: Paul Terry, Pete Postlethwaite, Miriam Margolyes, Joanna
Lumley and the voices of Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Jane
Leeves, Susan Sarandon, David Thewlis
Director: Henry Selick
Screenplay: Karey Kirkpatrick, Jonathan Roberts, Steve Bloom,
based on the book by Roald Dahl
Music: Randy Newman
MPAA rating: PG (sometimes dark and threatening situations for
the smaller children)
Mal's rating: ***1/2
Locations: Janaf, Norfolk; Kemps River Crossing, Lynnhaven 8,
Surf-n-Sand, Virginia Beach
by CNB