James and the Giant Peach (film)

James and the Giant Peach
Film poster
Directed by	Henry Selick
Produced by	Tim Burton Denise Di Novi
Screenplay by	Steven Bloom Karey Kirkpatrick Jonathan Roberts
Based on	James and the Giant Peach  by Roald Dahl
Narrated by	Pete Postlethwaite
Starring	Paul Terry Simon Callow Richard Dreyfuss Susan Sarandon Jane Leeves Miriam Margolyes David Thewlis Joanna Lumley
Music by	Randy Newman
Cinematography	Pete Kozachik Hiro Narita
Editing by	Stan Webb
Studio	Walt Disney Pictures Allied Filmmakers Skellington Productions
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures
Release date(s)	April 12, 1996 (1996-04-12) (United States) August 2, 1996 (1996-08-02) (United Kingdom)
Running time	79 minutes
Country	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Budget	$38 million
Box office	$37,734,758

James and the Giant Peach is a 1996 British-American musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick, based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. It was produced by Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi. The film is a combination of live action and stop-motion animation.

Plot

In the 1930s, James Henry Trotter is a young boy who lives with his parents by the sea in the United Kingdom. On James's birthday, they plan to go to New York City and visit the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world. However, his parents are later killed by a ghostly rhinoceros from the sky and finds himself living with his two cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge.

He is forced to work all day and they threaten him with beatings to keep him in line and taunt him about the mysterious rhino and other hazards if he tries to leave.

While rescuing a spider from being squashed by his aunts, James meets a mysterious man with a bag of magic green "crocodile tongues", which he gives to James to make his life better. The soldier warns him not to lose the "tongues" and disappears. When James is returning to the house, he trips and the "tongues" escape into the ground.

One peach is soon found on a withered old tree, and grows into immense proportions. Spiker and Sponge use the giant peach as an attraction, making lots of money as James watches from the house, not allowed to leave. That night, James is sent to pick up the garbage. While doing so, he grabs a chunk of the peach to eat as one of the "crocodile tongues" jumps into it. A large hole appears inside the peach and James crawls inside, where he finds and befriends a group of life-size anthropomorphic bugs who also dream of an ideal home (Grasshopper, Centipede, Earthworm, Miss Spider, Ladybug, and Glowworm), and is also turned into a more animated form. As they hear the aunts search for James, Centipede manages to cut the stem holding the giant peach to the tree and the peach rolls away to the Atlantic Ocean with James and his friends inside it, seemingly squashing Spiker and Sponge's antique car as they try to chase it.

Remembering his dream to visit New York City, James and the insects decide to go there with Centipede steering the peach claiming he sailed the world as a "Commodore". They use Miss Spider's silk to capture and tie a hundred seagulls to the peach stem, while battling against a giant robotic shark. They escape just in time. While flying, James and his friends eventually find themselves hungry and soon realize that "their whole ship is made out of food". After gorging most of the inside of the peach, Miss Spider, while using her web to tuck in James, reveals to him that she was the spider he saved from Spiker and Sponge. James then has a nightmare of him as a caterpillar attacked by Spiker, Sponge, and a spray the aunts used that resembles the rhino. When he wakes up, he and his friends find themselves in The Arctic, lost and cold. The Centipede has fallen asleep while keeping watch, resulting in them further away from their destination than ever. It is then revealed that the Centipede has never traveled the world and has only lived on 2 pages of the National Geographic. After hearing the Grasshoper wishing they had a compass, Centipede jumps off the peach into the icy water below and searches a sunken ship. He finds a compass but is taken prisoner by a group of skeletal pirates. James and Miss Spider rescue him and the journey continues.

As the group finally reaches New York City, a storm appears. A flash of lightning reveals the rhino approaching towards them. James is terrified but faces his fears and gets his friends to safety before the rhino strikes the peach with lightning; The strings keeping the seagulls attached to the peach are cut and the peach falls to the city, dragging James with it. James coughs up the crocodile tongue as he reawakens, transforms back into his normal form, and emerges from the peach realizing it has landed right on top of the Empire State Building.

After being rescued by the police and firefighters, Spiker and Sponge arrive, supposedly having driven their car across the seabed, and attempt to take back James and the peach. James stands up to Spiker and Sponge, and they attempt to kill James. Using the remaining seagulls, the bugs arrive in New York City. They tie up Spiker and Sponge with Miss Spider's silk and they are taken away. James introduces his friends and allows the children of New York to eat up the peach.

The peach stone is made into a house in Central Park, where James lives with the bugs and has the friends he could wish for. Centipede runs for New York mayor, Grasshopper becomes a professional violinist, Earthworm becomes a mascot for a new cream, Ladybug becomes a nurse, Glowworm lights up the Statue of Liberty, Miss Spider owns a club called "Spider Club", and James celebrates his 9th birthday with his new family.

In a post-credits scene, a new arcade game called "Spike the Aunts" is shown, featuring the rhino.

Cast

• Paul Terry as James Henry Trotter
• Miriam Margolyes as Sponge
• Joanna Lumley as Spiker
• Pete Postlethwaite as Magic Man/Narrator

Voices

• Simon Callow as Grasshopper
• Richard Dreyfuss as Centipede
  • Jeff Bennett as the centipede's singing voice
• Jane Leeves as Ladybug
• Susan Sarandon as Miss Spider
• David Thewlis as Earthworm
• Miriam Margolyes as the Glowworm

Songs

• My Name Is James - Paul Terry
• That's the Life For Me - Jeff Bennett, Susan Sarandon, Jane Leeves, Miriam Margolyes, Simon Callow, and David Thewlis
• Eating the Peach - Jeff Bennett, Susan Sarandon, Jane Leeves, Miriam Margolyes, Simon Callow, David Thewlis, and Paul Terry
• Family - Simon Callow, Jeff Bennett, Jane Leeves, David Thewlis, Susan Sarandon, Miriam Margolyes, and Paul Terry
• Good News - Randy Newman

Production

The film begins with normal live-action for the first 20 minutes, but becomes stop-motion animation after James enters the peach, and then live-action when James enters New York City, New York (although the mutated insect characters remained in stop-motion). Selick had originally planned for James to be a real actor through the entire film, then later considered doing the whole film in stop-motion, but ultimately settled on doing entirely live-action and entirely stop-motion sequences because of costs. Unlike the novel, James' aunts are not killed by the rolling peach (though his parents' deaths also occur like the novel) and follow him to New York, and the film also has James dream of going to New York instead of simply winding up there.

Reception

Though Dahl declined numerous offers to have a film version of James and the Giant Peach produced during his lifetime, his widow, Liccy, approved having a live action version produced. She said that, "I think Roald would have been delighted with what they did with James." James and the Giant Peach received near-universal acclaim from film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 93% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 58 reviews. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, praising the animated part, but calling the live-action segments "crude." Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "a technological marvel, arch and innovative with a daringly offbeat visual conception" and "a strenuously artful film with a macabre edge."

Awards

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Best Original Musical or Comedy Score (by Randy Newman). It won Best Animated Feature Film at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

Home media

A digitally restored Blu-ray/DVD combo pack was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on August 3, 2010 in the United States.

External links

• James and the Giant Peach at the Internet Movie Database
• James and the Giant Peach at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• James and the Giant Peach at AllRovi
• James and the Giant Peach at Box Office Mojo
• James and the Giant Peach at Rotten Tomatoes