James and the Giant Peach is the second film from the collective minds of Tim Burton and Henry Selick, and is shot with a stop motion animation style similar to that used in A Nightmare Before Christmas. The story is based on the classic children’s book by Roald Dahl. Dahl, the author of stories such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Witches, has always mixed the macabre into his children’s stories giving them an edge that is not very common in their demographic. With some pretty frightening imagery and themes, parents might want to think twice before sharing James and the Giant Peach with their young ones.

The film isn’t bad, but it’s no A Nightmare Before Christmas. The first twenty minutes and the last five minutes are all live action which is shot and acted pretty blandly. The animation sequences are absolutely amazing, but somewhere in the middle the story starts to get a bit tedious. The seventy nine minutes begin to creep by and I found myself checking my watch more frequently towards the end.

But the film has hints of what it takes to make a cult classic, so we wouldn’t expect it to fade away from the public eye any time soon. If you’ve got yourself some kids, you probably ought to treat them, and yourself, to a viewing.

Scott and Matt of The Gods of Filmmaking
http://www.godsoffilmmaking.com/html/james_and_the_giant_peach.html