James and the Giant Peach (film)

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, and starred Paul Terry as James. The film is a combination of live action and stop-motion animation. Co-stars Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margolyes played James's aunts in the live-action segments, and Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, Jane Leeves, David Thewlis, and Margolyes voiced his insect friends in the animation sequences.

Plot
James Henry Trotter is a young boy who lives with his parents in a cozy beach house by the sea in England. On James' birthday, they plan to go to New York City and visit the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world. However, his parents abruptly are eaten by a ghostly rhinoceros from the sky and James finds himself living with his two abusive and cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge, in an old, run-down house on top of a high hill.

He is forced to work all day and they antagonize him by threatening him with beatings to keep him in line and torment him about the mysterious rhino and other hazards if he ever attempts to escape. After 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 man instructs him not to lose the crocodile tongues and disappears. When James is returning to the house, he trips and the crocodile tongues escape into the ground.

This transforms an ordinary peach on a withered old tree into enormous proportions. Spiker and Sponge sell tickets to view the giant peach. James crawls inside a large hole he inadvertently creates in the peach, and he finds and befriends a group of life-size anthropomorphic bugs (Mr. Grasshopper, Mr. Centipede, Earthworm, Miss Spider, Mrs. Ladybug, and Glowworm). As they hear the aunts search for James, Mr. Centipede cuts the stem connecting the giant peach to the tree and the peach rolls away to the Atlantic Ocean.

Remembering his dream to visit New York City, James and the insects decide to go there with Mr. Centipede steering the peach. They use Miss Spider's silk to capture and tie a hundred seagulls to the peach stem, while battling against a giant robotic shark. Miss Spider reveals to James that she was the spider he saved from Spiker and Sponge. The next morning, James and his friends find themselves in the cold Arctic; the Centipede has fallen asleep while keeping watch. After hearing Mr. Grasshopper wishing they had a compass, Mr. Centipede jumps off the peach into the icy water below and searches a sunken ship for a compass but is taken prisoner by skeletal pirates, led by Jack Skellington. James and Miss Spider rescue him and the journey continues.

As they reach New York City, a storm appears, along with the rhino. James, though frightened, confronts the rhino and gets his friends to safety before the rhino strikes the peach with lightning; James and the peach fall to the city below, landing on top of the Empire State Building. After he is rescued by police officers, firefighters, and the largest crane in New York, Spiker and Sponge arrive and attempt to claim James and the peach. Finally having had enough of his aunts' cruelty, James stands up to Spiker and Sponge and reveals their abusive behavior towards him to the crowd, who gasp in shock at the revelation. Spiker and Sponge become enraged by James' backtalk and attempt to kill him, via fire axes. The bugs arrive and tie up Spiker and Sponge with Miss Spider's silk and both aunts are arrested for heinous child abuse and attempted murder. James introduces his friends to the New Yorkers and allows the children to eat up the peach.

The peach pit is made into a house in Central Park, where James lives happily with the bugs, who form his new family and also take important jobs in the city. James celebrates his ninth birthday with his new family and friends.

Cast

 * Paul Terry as James Henry Trotter
 * Miriam Margolyes as Aunt Sponge
 * Joanna Lumley as Aunt Spiker
 * Pete Postlethwaite as Narrator/the Magic Man
 * Steven Culp as James' Father
 * Susan Turner-Cray as James' Mother
 * Mike Starr as Beat Cop

Voices

 * Simon Callow as Mr. Grasshopper
 * Richard Dreyfuss as Mr. Centipede
 * Jeff Bennett as Mr. Centipede (singing voice)
 * Jane Leeves as Mrs. Ladybug
 * Susan Sarandon as Miss Spider
 * David Thewlis as Earthworm
 * Miriam Margolyes as Glowworm

Production
Walt Disney Pictures acquired the film rights to the book from the Dahl estate in 1992. The film begins with 20 minutes of normal live-action, but becomes stop-motion animation after James enters the peach, and then live-action when James enters New York City (although the arthropod characters remained in stop-motion). Selick had originally planned James to be a real actor through the entire film, then later considered doing the whole film in stop-motion; but ultimately settled on entirely live-action and entirely stop-motion sequences, to keep lower costs. Unlike the novel, James' aunts are not killed by the rolling peach (though his parents' deaths occur as in the novel) but follow him to New York.

Reception
Though Roald Dahl refused numerous offers to have a film version of James and the Giant Peach produced during his lifetime, his widow, Liccy, approved an offer to have a live action version produced. She thinks Roald "would have been delighted with what they did with James. It is a wonderful film."

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 92% based on reviews from 73 critics, with an average score of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus states: "The arresting and dynamic visuals, offbeat details and light-as-air storytelling make James and the Giant Peach solid family entertainment".

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 and nominations
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, 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.

Adaptations
The film was made into a musical of the same title with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and book by Timothy Allen McDonald. The musical premiered at Goodspeed Musicals in October 2010 and is currently produced in regional and youth theatre.