8 / 10
Official trailer
James and the Giant Peach is Henry Selick’s second feature and one of the strangest American family films of the 1990s. Tim Burton produced it, Selick directed it, and Paul Terry plays the live-action James in the bookend sequences.
The stop-motion middle of the film features Susan Sarandon as Miss Spider, Simon Callow as Grasshopper, David Thewlis as Earthworm, Richard Dreyfuss as Centipede, and Jane Leeves as Ladybug. Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margolyes play the aunts.
The film made approximately twenty-eight million dollars on a thirty-eight million dollar budget. It was Selick’s follow-up to The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and was Disney’s attempt to repeat that film’s success. It didn’t repeat that success commercially but it’s aged into a cult favorite, especially among adults who grew up with the Dahl novel.
I find this film charming and odd in the best way. Selick’s insects are creepy and lovable at once, and the peach sequences have a handmade texture that makes me want to reach into the frame and touch things. What keeps me from going higher is that the film feels thin in the places where Dahl’s story has the most feeling.
The Structural Conceit
The film opens in live action, transitions to stop-motion when James enters the peach, and returns briefly to live action at the end. The structure is the film’s most distinctive choice. Selick is signaling that the magical interior of the peach is a different kind of reality than the dull world James is escaping. The visual shift between formats is the actual transformation. The audience doesn’t just hear that James’s life has changed. They see the format of the film change to match.
The decision is consistent with Dahl’s source novel, in which James’s escape is meant to be the discovery of a more vivid life than the one his aunts forced him into. The format shift makes the metaphor literal. The peach is more real.
That switch into stop-motion is my favorite moment in the film. The world suddenly gets color and weight, and I felt James’s relief right along with him.
For Writers
A formal shift in a story can carry meaning that no plot beat can carry. The change from live-action to stop-motion in James and the Giant Peach is the film’s central statement. The audience doesn’t need to be told that James has entered a different kind of life. The film’s medium changes around him. The lesson is that the form of a story is part of its content. If you can use the form to communicate something the words couldn’t, the formal choice is doing the heaviest lifting.
The Stop-Motion
The peach interior sequences are the film’s strongest material.
The insects are designed as full-bodied stop-motion characters with elaborate puppet work. Miss Spider’s articulated legs, Centipede’s segmented body, and Grasshopper’s wings are some of the most carefully rendered insect characters in any film of the era. The peach itself is a fully realized stop-motion set with rooms, corridors, and exterior surfaces.
The Atlantic crossing sequences include a shark attack, a storm, and an encounter with the cloud-dwelling Cloud-Men. The Cloud-Men sequence is the film’s most visually adventurous moment. Selick imagines the cloud-dwellers as faintly menacing rain-controlling spirits who hurl hailstones at the peach. The sequence is short and goes nowhere narratively, but the imagery is strong.
I’d trade two of the songs for another minute of the skeleton pirates under the Arctic ice. That sequence barely moves the story and I don’t care in the slightest, because it’s the strangest and eeriest stretch of the picture.
For Writers
An imaginative sequence can stand on its own merit even if it doesn’t advance the plot. The Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach don’t move the story forward in any meaningful way. The sequence exists because Dahl invented them and because Selick wanted to put them on screen. The audience accepts the sequence because the imaginative reward is high. The lesson is that not every scene needs to be a plot beat. Pure imagination has its own value if the execution is committed.
What Does Not Work
The songs are weak. Randy Newman wrote them.
They’re competent but not memorable. The film is structurally a musical and the songs don’t justify their interruptions of the action. James’s emotional arc is also less developed than the Dahl novel allowed. The film doesn’t have the runtime for the full development of James’s grief over his dead parents, his relationship with the insects, and his eventual escape from his aunts. Some emotional beats are signaled instead of developed.
The songs are where the film loses me. Each number lands like a pause button, and I kept wishing the characters would stop singing about their feelings and get back to crossing the ocean. The live-action bookend sequences are the weakest part of the film. Lumley and Margolyes as the aunts are properly grotesque but the live-action human James doesn’t have the same magic as his stop-motion incarnation. The film knows it. The bookends are kept short.
For Writers
A weak song in a musical is more costly than a weak scene in a non-musical, because the song interrupts the action and demands the audience’s full attention. James and the Giant Peach has several songs that don’t justify their stops. The lesson is that musical numbers are high-risk story beats. If the song doesn’t advance plot, character, or theme, it shouldn’t be in the film.
Songs that pause the story to sing about feelings are usually a sign that the script couldn’t figure out how to convey the feelings through action.
Craft Note
Henry Selick directed. Tim Burton produced. Karey Kirkpatrick, Jonathan Roberts, and Steve Bloom wrote, adapted from Roald Dahl’s 1961 novel. Paul Terry as live-action James. Susan Sarandon voiced Miss Spider. Simon Callow voiced Grasshopper. David Thewlis voiced Earthworm. Richard Dreyfuss voiced Centipede. Jane Leeves voiced Ladybug. Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margolyes as Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge. Randy Newman composed the songs and score. Released April 1996. Approximately thirty-eight million dollar budget. Twenty-eight million worldwide gross. Skellington Productions produced the stop-motion sequences.
Is James and the Giant Peach worth watching?
8/10. I love the peach, the insects and the skeleton pirates, and the stop-motion sequences are good enough that I forgive a lot. The two points come off for Newman’s songs, which stall the story, and for a James whose grief the film signals more than it earns. The live-action bookends are functional. Watch it for the visuals and for the insect characters. Read the book first.
