Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Directed by Tim Burton
A teenager finds himself transported to an island where he must help protect a group of orphans with special powers from creatures intent on destroying them.
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What critics say influenced Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
The whole thing sounded too much like a copyright-skirting nod to Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, of “X-Men” fame.
Other viewers will see echoes of X-Men , Groundhog Day , Ladyhawke , Toy Story and even the 1980s Biggles movie, as the story progresses.
The movie's a testament to outsiders, as most of Burton's films are, though the source material (the novel) feels to me like inorganic matter, made up of too many easily identifiable fantasy reference points, from Harry Potter to the mutants of "X-Men."
Guided by Ransom Riggs’ YA novel on which the film is based, Burton riffs on X-Men and (to a lesser extent) Harry Potter, and while the combination may look winning on paper, the results are tragically clichéd and will likely leave fans of both Burton and the novel frustrated and confused.
It just can’t stop coming up with limitlessly peculiar stuff, much of which has a familiar odor: It’s “X-Men” meets “Alice in Wonderland” meets “Groundhog Day,” plus there’s a kind of Addams Family versus the Holocaust vibe — “They’re creepy, they’re spikey, they’re totally Third Reich-y.”
This is pretty much Burton doing an X-Men movie, with a plucky yesteryear vibe and evil Samuel L. Jackson thrown in for extra fun.
Overseas, Abe's past becomes clearer, part of a time-continuum ploy Riggs devised, like Groundhog Day rebooted to World War II.
It just can’t stop coming up with limitlessly peculiar stuff, much of which has a familiar odor: It’s “X-Men” meets “Alice in Wonderland” meets “Groundhog Day,” plus there’s a kind of Addams Family versus the Holocaust vibe — “They’re creepy, they’re spikey, they’re totally Third Reich-y.”
It's the same day, over and over again, "Groundhog Day" style.
Miss Peregrine has been able so far to preserve in an endless cycle, “Groundhog Day”-style, the day prior to the fatal bombing by creating “loops” in time.
The result is basically “Groundhog Day” meets The X-Men, with a touch of “American Horror Story” thrown in for good measure.
The peculiar children of the film's title are certainly unique but you can find plenty of other films in the DNA of "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," particularly skeleton soldiers from "Jason and the Argonauts," the X-Men franchise for making freaks lovable, "Groundhog Day" and even the underappreciated Hayden Christensen film "Jumper," which also has time shifting at its core and the same sort of evil force in Samuel L. Jackson.
Working from a screenplay by Jane Goldman (“The Woman in Black”), Burton delivers his most ambitious and engaging film since “Sweeney Todd” (2007).
Showing restraint is unusual for him, and letting the inherent weirdness of the story do the work, he has turned out his best film since “Sweeney Todd” (2007).
A quick jaunt through the catalog of the famous filmmaker more than suggests synchronicity with that worldview, although there have been exceptions – though both his “Alice in Wonderland” and “Sweeney Todd” earned accolades from the general public, neither could be regarded in the same way as many of his earliest successes (“Batman,” “Beetlejuice” and “Edward Scissorhands,” for instance).
Though its cabinet-of-wonders aesthetic and meticulously appointed visuals announce it as a Burton movie through and through, this is easily the director’s finest work since his masterful 2007 screen adaptation of “Sweeney Todd,” and a striking reminder of what an unfettered gothic imagination can achieve with the right focus and an infusion of discipline.
Not since “Sweeney Todd,” and before that all the way back to “Sleepy Hollow,” have the studios found such a perfect match of material for Hollywood’s most iconic auteur.
Alice in Wonderland, Sweeney Todd, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were all visually daring, but emotionally vacant.
The peculiar children of the film's title are certainly unique but you can find plenty of other films in the DNA of "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," particularly skeleton soldiers from "Jason and the Argonauts," the X-Men franchise for making freaks lovable, "Groundhog Day" and even the underappreciated Hayden Christensen film "Jumper," which also has time shifting at its core and the same sort of evil force in Samuel L. Jackson.
Like some of the director's earlier works, this one features some moments of stop-motion animation (or at least computer animation made to appear that way) that are either lifted from other movies (a creepily modified toy battle scene reminiscent of views from "Toy Story") or are moments of homage, including a fun update on the legendary "Jason and the Argonauts" skeleton fight scene (that ends up far closer to Harryhausen's long-ago work than this year's earlier release of "Kubo and the Two Strings" that featured just one giant skeleton).
It’s all the more fun when the monsters finally turn up, with a joyous nod to the Ray Harryhausen skeleton battle from “Jason and the Argonauts” and a dining-room scene with bad guys gathered around the table to feast on a platter of children’s eyeballs.
While the finale pales in comparison to a lot of big-budget Hollywood action productions, it does have the advantage of using stop-motion animated skeletons, which pays homage to the stop-motion animation work of Ray Harryhausen in “Jason and the Argonauts.”
My favorite involves the children in a climactic battle with the monsters while receiving the aid of some reanimated skeletons — reminiscent of “Jason and the Argonauts.”
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Like some of the director's earlier works, this one features some moments of stop-motion animation (or at least computer animation made to appear that way) that are either lifted from other movies (a creepily modified toy battle scene reminiscent of views from "Toy Story") or are moments of homage, including a fun update on the legendary "Jason and the Argonauts" skeleton fight scene (that ends up far closer to Harryhausen's long-ago work than this year's earlier release of "Kubo and the Two Strings" that featured just one giant skeleton).
Other viewers will see echoes of X-Men , Groundhog Day , Ladyhawke , Toy Story and even the 1980s Biggles movie, as the story progresses.
At first glance, the pairing of Ransom Riggs’s macabre 2011 coming-of-age novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and director Tim Burton would seem like a match made in movieland heaven: an Edward Gorey–inspired island of lost souls as filmed through the lens of old-school horror filmmakers, such as Tod Browning (1931’s Dracula and 1932’s Freaks).
Burton’s version of Riggs’ book, about children with alarming mutations and superpowers, is about what you’d expect: a tween-friendly version of Tod Browning’s shock-horror classic, “Freaks.”
It’s nowhere near as good as Burton’s foray into similar-minded material, such as 1990’s masterful Edward Scissorhands, but then nothing Burton has made in recent years has been much to write home about.
It's what you expect from the director of Alice in Wonderland, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands - and if you're familiar with the novel you'll understand how well the director and this story are suited.
It doesn't have the striking personality of "Beetlejuice" or the surprising wonder of "Edward Scissorhands," but “Miss Peregrine” still offers Burton's trademark exploration of the world from the perspective of the people who never feel like they fit in.
There’s one character who can bring inanimate objects to life as puppets — dolls, corpses, he doesn’t much care — and a fight he stages between two Frankentoys could be right out of Edward Scissorhands.
Though the actress is brunette, Burton dressed her as a blonde (and emphasized her eyes), in the tradition of bottle blondes in his films, from Kim in “Edward Scissorhands” to Katrina Van Tassel in “Sleepy Hollow” and Alice in “Alice in Wonderland.”
Art-house geeks are forever on the lookout for the fabulous fabulist to craft another one of his dark, slightly perverse fairy tales like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
At first glance, the pairing of Ransom Riggs’s macabre 2011 coming-of-age novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and director Tim Burton would seem like a match made in movieland heaven: an Edward Gorey–inspired island of lost souls as filmed through the lens of old-school horror filmmakers, such as Tod Browning (1931’s Dracula and 1932’s Freaks).
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This is predictable content, but there’s worse places to be than Big Fish territory.
In adapting Ransom Riggs’s 2011 YA novel, screenwriter Jane Goldman (“Kingsman: The Secret Service”) provides Burton with the same mix of real and fantasy he conjured for the similarly themed “Big Fish.”
Goldman’s frequently amusing script is the secret ingredient that makes “Miss Peregrine” such an appropriate fit for Burton’s peculiar sensibility, allowing the director to revisit and expand motifs and themes from his earlier work: With its time-skipping chronology and family-reconciling framing device, the entire tale could be another of Burton’s “Big Fish” stories (from the film of the same name); it offers opportunities for “Frankenweenie”-style stop-motion; there are ostracized freaks (and even a dino-shaped topiary) straight out of “Edward Scissorhands”; and its elaborate, meticulously decorated mansion manages to improve upon the wonky houses seen in “Beetlejuice” and “Dark Shadows.”
There are also flourishes reminiscent of his modern-day fairy tale Big Fish and the dramatic palette contrast of Edward Scissorhands, making you feel that all that's going to happen has happened once before in a previous feature.
(It's essentially the plot of Burton's Big Fish all over again.)
Burton of course is the mad genius behind “Batman,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “Beetlejuice” and “Big Fish,” among many other singular works — but alas, “Miss Peregrine” ranks down there with “Dark Shadows” as a rare Burton bust.
Inspired to investigate for himself, Jake travels from sunny Florida to foggy Wales, pokes around the rundown mansion where gramps claims to have once lived, and then stumbles backward in time into an eternally repeating day, like the title characters of Jacques Rivette’s Céline And Julie Go Boating.