Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Tockinit not horrible nor great

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Aryana Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Clifton Johnson I could have lived without the musical numbers, and the movie did not pull me in the way I hoped it would. BUT it probably captured the bizarre genius storytelling of Roald Dahl better than any other adaptation*, even down to the uneven plot and pacing.*Except Fantastic Mr Fox which is a whole different category.

ciaranjshegarty This film is a joy to watch, so fresh, so tasty, bursting with fruity ideas and music that really make you smile to the world and make you think more about those you love and tell them so. Peace always to everyone, James you are incredible. Thank you, peach.Love Kiki xxxix

Leofwine_draca JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH is a good watch if you like seeing classic works of children's fiction being given the commercial, Walt Disney treatment: i.e. the shoehorning-in of random American characters and an incessant, action-focused narrative that barely gives you a moment to draw breath.This film was made by The Nightmare Before Christmas's Henry Selick, still riding high on the coat-tails of his successful cult feature. It's that film's inferior cousin in every respect, feeling cheap and uninteresting throughout; the characters are poorly drawn and the protagonist unsympathetic, so it's very hard to like the film at all. It might look like Dahl's original book, but it has none of the magic or atmosphere.I always enjoy seeing stop motion animation wherever it appears, but it does look very cheap here - among the cheapest I've seen. It's no surprise that half the film takes place (boringly) in live action, as they ran out of budget for the animation. On the plus side we get a Pete Postlethwaite cameo, but on the minus side we get Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margoyles hamming it up in the worst pantomime tradition. The worst voice actor of the plot? Richard Dreyfuss, who wouldn't understand restraint if it bit him on the backside.

Chris Mizerak There seems to be a split reaction from critics and audiences alike when talking about Henry Selick's 1996 stop-motion animated feature "James and the Giant Peach". While the critics (particularly Gene Siskel) highly praise this picture and call it a wonderful children's fantasy, the audiences don't seem to care much for it. Maybe it's because this picture may be too weird for them like many of the films made by Tim Burton, who's one of the film's producers. Personally, I don't know what to make of this film even after seeing it plenty of times except that I can see where both sides are coming from. We follow a young British boy named James (Paul Terry) whose parents were killed by a rhinoceros (don't ask how or why since the picture never explains that). He's forced to live with his two despicable aunts (Miriam Margolyes, Joanna Lumley) where he has to do all kinds of chores (he practically does more work than those two ever seem to do in five seconds), and be humiliated in more ways than one. One day, a mysterious man (Pete Postlethwaite) who "knows more than just his name" gives James a bag of magical "crocodile tongues", which he claims will help put some happiness into his sad life. But when James accidentally lets these magical tongues loose, James and his aunts soon discover a peach on a dead tree that grows so gigantic that it's even bigger than the tree from which it grew on. The aunts plan on using their giant peach as a tourist attraction so they can make good profits off of their discovery, while James still has to continue doing chores. One night, James crawls inside a large hole in the peach and discovers a group of human-sized bugs including a grasshopper (Simon Callow), a centipede (Richard Dreyfuss), an earthworm (David Thewlis), a spider (Susan Sarandon), a ladybug (Jane Leeves), and a glowworm (Miriam Margolyes). Like James, they dream of getting out of his aunt's place in England and heading to New York City where his parents always dreamed of going. And that's exactly what they do through a series of elaborate, fanciful scenarios such as rolling away into the Atlantic Ocean, using Miss Spider's silk to capture and tie a hundred seagulls to the peach stem so the peach can fly, and battling a mechanical shark and skeleton pirates under the icy seas of the Arctic Ocean. Whether you like this children's fantasy or not, there are certain things about the film that you got to give it credit for. For one thing, regardless of how implausible the story can be most of the time, I do respect the creativity and the imagination that was incorporated into this story. I admire how this film had the courage to simply let its imagination run wild regardless of our skepticism and our knowledge that no such scenarios could take place in real life. The stop-motion animation is impressive in its own right particularly with the highly detailed and imaginative character designs. The voice-over work from the likes of Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, and Susan Sarandon are very well done and truly bring these characters to life. The songs by Randy Newman, with the exception of "My Name is James" which I thought had embarrassing lyrics, are pretty solid with the standouts being "Family" and "Good News". Like much of the best films made by the Disney Company, the strength of the film lies in the visuals and the audio. Now, I will say that the storytelling in this film isn't very consistent and is filled with major plot flaws that can't be glossed over. For example, I think that the film's writers made the aunt characters way too evil. If any parents of a child knew they had relatives who treated children the way these two aunts did, they shouldn't have even allowed custody of the child to these people in the first place. Let me put this in another way. Anyone who has relatives who taunt a child over the death of their parents or starve the child to death by feeding them non-food shouldn't just simply pretend they don't exist. They need to have an intervention with them immediately for the benefit of the child. There are also some scenes that don't really go anywhere story wise. For example, the dream sequence with James as a caterpillar being chased by his aunts and the rhino that killed his parents is pretty pointless. To be fair though, there have been dream sequences in other films that are much worse than this, and they at least prepare us ahead of time for that type of scene. While the battles between the shark as well as the underwater skeleton pirates are decent, they both go by a little too quickly and don't leave much of an impact. As long as you leave your common sense and logic out the door, "James and the Giant Peach" will fill the bill just fine as far as family entertainment goes. Kids and adults can admire the creativity of the story, the unique animation in the vein of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993), the colorful characters including the centipede and the grasshopper, and maybe find one or two good tunes out of it as well.