James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Directed by Henry Selick
When the young orphan boy James spills a magic bag of crocodile tongues, he finds himself in possession of a giant peach that flies him away to strange lands.
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What critics compared James and the Giant Peach to
This has been the case with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (although not necessarily the Tim Burton re-telling of the story), James and the Giant Peach , and Matilda.
Opening in theaters Wednesday, "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," based on the book by Roald Dahl, is a puckish and charming stop-motion-animated film in the tradition of "Wallace & Gromit," "James and the Giant Peach" and "Chicken Run."
Dahl also wrote “James and the Giant Peach” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, two children’s stories adapted for the screen.
Emerging from the divine mind of author Roald Dahl (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach”), “Fantastic Mr. Fox” offers Anderson a hefty slice of whimsy to work with.
Employing stop-motion animation that renders human beings with the distinctive characteristics evident in both The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach , Selick finds the perfect look to bring Gaiman's vision to life.
As a commercial art form, stop-motion animation has been relegated to the pre-digital past, but don’t tell that to Henry Selick ("James and the Giant Peach," "The Nightmare Before Christmas"), the writer/director of "Coraline," a stop-motion animated film shot in stereoscopic 3D based on Neil Gaiman’s ("Beowulf," "Anansi Boys," "American Gods," "Stardust," "Neverwhere," "Good Omens," "Sandman") Hugo- and Nebula-winning dark fantasy novel.
The director, genius puppetmaster Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas," "James and the Giant Peach"), has created an agreeably creepy wonderland of giant bugs, dancing flowers and acrobatic mice, along with a few hair-raising hobgoblins that find a worthy adversary in courageous Coraline.
Henry Selick, the mad-genius puppetmaster behind "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach," has brought Neil Gaiman's 2002 cult novella to the screen with almost all its playful psychodrama intact.
Like his James and the Giant Peach (1996), this is adapted from a popular children's fantasy—Neil Gaiman's 2002 horror novella Coraline, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Gaiman and screenwriter/director Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas" and the underrated "James and the Giant Peach"), along with a small nation of stop-motion animation wizards, have painstakingly created an ambitious and marvelously detailed world.
Selick was not involved in the production (Mike Johnson, who previously worked on the animation teams of both The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, fills the gap), which supposedly took ten years to complete, but you would never know it.
After producing The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach , he has finally taken the reins and perfected what looks like a very cumbersome but amazing way of doing animation.
The same affliction mars “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” as well; it’s visually stunning, leaps and bounds beyond both “Nightmare” and 1995’s “James and the Giant Peach.”
Burton's prior stop motion animations, 1993's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and, to a lesser extent, 1996's "James and the Giant Peach," both of which he produced (Henry Selick directed), were far more memorable works, with "Nightmare's" songs worthy of Broadway.
In technical terms, Corpse Bride is a big advance on The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, the stop-motion movies he produced with co-director Henry Selick.
Terry has some of the angelic look of the young Mark Lester in the 1968 "Oliver!" and his James suffers his own cycle of Dickensian misery.
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Like Matilda or James and the Giant Peach, Death of a Unicorn chronicles a young person inhabiting a world of grotesque adults who are inevitably no match for the fantastical.
For those unfamiliar with author Daniel Handler (pen name Lemony Snicket) and his "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books, here's a literary litmus test: How do you feel about the children's books written by Roald Dahl, such as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "James and the Giant Peach" and "The Witches"?
Like the earlier "Chocolate Factory" movie, "Charlie" is based on a 1964 book by the late Roald Dahl (another of whose tales, "James and the Giant Peach," was turned into a 1996 animated feature that Tim Burton produced).
Directed by plasticine geniuses Peter Lord ("Adam," "Wat's Pig") and Nick Park ("Creature Comforts," "The Wrong Trousers") and produced by both men with Aardman co-founder David Sproxton, the movie is as much fun as The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach combined, minus the sociopathic cynicism even Tim Burton seems to be outgrowing of late.
Together they also came up with the storyline, although the sole final screenplay credit goes to Karey Kirkpatrick, one of the writers on Disney's "James and the Giant Peach."
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Here are a few points of comparison: Matilda; Jumanji; The Witches; James and the Giant Peach; Willy Wonka.
Like the earlier "Chocolate Factory" movie, "Charlie" is based on a 1964 book by the late Roald Dahl (another of whose tales, "James and the Giant Peach," was turned into a 1996 animated feature that Tim Burton produced).
He's already tackled, as producer, another of Dahl's whimsical books, "James and the Giant Peach."
The brains behind such classics as "James and the Giant Peach", “The Witches”, "The Man from the South" (which was spoofed by Tarantino in his segment of "Four Rooms") and the unforgettable first episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" ("Lamb to the Slaughter"), Dahl made a name for himself with his playful intelligence, and decidedly twisted sense of humor.
Brought to life by visionary director, Tim Burton, who also adapted another of Dahl's works "James and the Giant Peach," the film preserves many of the thrills and possibilities that make the story rewarding and riotous, a morality tale where the nasty are punished and the good are justly rewarded.
Burton produced Henry Selick's animated James and the Giant Peach, but this time he's in the director's chair, with his favorite star in the camera's crosshairs.