James and the Giant Peach (film)
| James and the Giant Peach | |
|---|---|
| File:Jamesandthegiantpeach.jpg James and the Giant Peach film poster | |
| Directed by | Henry Selick |
| Written by | Steven Bloom, Karey Kirkpatrick, Jonathan Roberts (screenplay) Roald Dahl (book) |
| Produced by | Tim Burton Denise Di Novi |
| Starring | Paul Terry Simon Callow Richard Dreyfuss Susan Sarandon Jane Leeves Miriam Margolyes David Thewlis Joanna Lumley |
| Music by | Randy Newman |
| Distributed by | Buena Vista Pictures |
Release dates | April 12, 1996 |
Running time | 84 min. |
| Countries |  United Kingdom United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $38,000,000 USD (estimated) |
James and the Giant Peach is a film based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name. It was produced by Tim Burton and directed by Henry Selick, who also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas. The movie is a combination of live action and stop-motion. The film was created in 1996 and was written by Karey Kirkpatrick.
Main Characters
James Henry Trotter: The hero. A poor and lonely boy, all James really wants is a friend and to see his dreams come true. He is also very smart and always figures out what to do.
Aunt Spiker: James' skinny aunt. The crueler and much more angry of the two. Aunt Spiker likes to flirt with men and likes to pretend she lives in luxury.
Aunt Sponge: James' fatter aunt. The more bumbling and less intelligent of the two, her only concern is herself.
Centipede: One of James' bug friends. Centipede is full of himself and likes to be in charge. He is a little bit of a moron. He is portrayed as a street-wise, sassy bug. Later in the film, a romance is hinted at between he and Miss Spider.
Miss Spider: James' first friend whom he saved from being squashed by his aunt, as a result she's indebted to him and is one of the closest bugs to him. She is sassy, smart-mouthed and, besides her 'beatnik' and dark exterior, speaks with a French/Russian accent. (Her French roots are supported by her wearing a berat throughout the movie.) Her constant bickering with the Centipede ceased as he risked his life to retrieve a compass from a sunken shipwreck for the crew's navigation.
Grasshopper: A charming, cultured grasshopper and James' bug friend. Grasshopper comes off as mature, but can be a little pushy. He enjoys putting Centipede down while praising the others although they become friends towards the end. He also plays the violin.
Miss Ladybug: The mother-figure bug friend. Always there to help James, likes sweet things, and can sometimes have a short temper.
Earthworm: James' nervous bug friend. Earhworm is low on self-esteem and not very brave.
Gloworm: The elderly and sweet, but deaf bug friend of James. She provides light inside the peach.
Story
James used to live with his mother and father until a rhino stomped them to death. Alone, he is forced to live with his horrible aunts, Spiker and Sponge. One day, after saving a spider from being squashed by his aunt, he meets a man who gives him magical little creatures called crocodile tongues. He takes them but lets them loose. Working their magic, they cause a peach to grow on a tree in front of the house. The peach grows bigger and bigger. Aunt Spiker and Sponge then use it to make money. James then takes a bite out of the peach and forges a tunnel into the center, in the tunnel one of the magic creatures jumps into his mouth, changing him due to the magic. Once inside, he finds large insects that have changed as well. From there, the group set out to New York where James' parents had promised to take him.
Cast
- James - Paul Terry
- Spiker - Joanna Lumley
- Sponge - Miriam Margolyes
- The Grasshopper - Simon Callow
- Miss Ladybug - Jane Leeves
- Miss Spider - Susan Sarandon
- Earthworm - David Thewlis
- The Centipede - Richard Dreyfuss
- The Glow Worm - Miriam Margolyes
Awards
The movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score (by Randy Newman).
Trivia
- The film begins with normal live-action, but becomes stop-motion animation after James enters the peach.
- In the pirate ship scene, the Centipede exclaims, "A Skellington!" upon spotting a skeleton that looks like Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Upon finding a compass moments later he exclaims, "Jackpot!" Another of the skeletons has the bill, sailor's cap, sailor's jacket and voice of Donald Duck. There also is a regular looking Pirate, a Viking and an Inuit.
- Andy Partridge of the British pop group XTC was originally tapped to write the songs for this film. When Partridge backed out over the compensation he was offered, the producers called on Randy Newman instead. Partridge eventually released demo versions of the four songs he composed for the film.
- The lyrics for the song Eating the Peach are those written by Roald Dahl and present in the book as one of the Centipede's songs.
- Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker briefly recite a few lines from a poem written by Dahl in the book.
- The Viking pirate in the film looks strikingly similar to a type of enemy in the video game The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge. This enemy either wields an axe or a hammer, and makes several growling noises similar to the roaring of the monster in the film.
- In the television show Mythbusters, a poster for James and The Giant Peach along with The Nightmare Before Christmas can be seen in a certain part of the M5 facility at times, suggesting that the studio may have worked on the two movies.
- Joanna Lumley and Richard Dreyfuss both starred in the romantic comedy, the Goodbye Girl.
Differences between the book and the film
- In the book there is a Silkworm (in the movie there is only spider silk used to tether the seagulls.)
- In the book, James fails to get any of the Crocodile tongues. However, in the film, one hops inside the chunk of peach which James eats; therefore, James does get the Crocodile tongues in the film.
- In the book, Miss LadyBug is instead Miss Ladybird – the British name for this insect.
- In the book, the friends are forced to tether seagulls to the peach to escape into the air from a swarm of sharks. In the movie, they are also forced to do this, but instead of a swarm of real sharks, they get attacked by a single giant mechanical shark equipped with circular saws and a harpoon gun.
- In the film, there is a sequence where the friends rescue the centipede (who had dived down into an icy ocean to find a compass) from a crew of skeleton pirates from whom the centipede had stolen the compass. There is no such sequence in the book. Instead, the book has a sequence where the centipede falls overboard accidentally and James and Ms. Spider go overboard to rescue him.
- In the book there are 'Cloudmen' living in the sky (and painting rainbows), but in the movie there aren't any, although the 'Cloud Rhino' – representing James's fear, as his parents have been eaten by a rhino – seems to replace them. Noticibly, there are whisps of clouds in the song, We're Family, which could be taken as Cloudmen.
- In the book, a jet airplane flies between the seagulls and the peach, severing the tethers and causing the peach to fall. In the movie, lightning (caused by the 'Cloud Rhinoceros') hits a fence wrapped around the peach, and it cuts the ropes.
- In the book, James's two evil aunts are flattened and killed by the rolling peach. In the movie, they survive this and chase James all the way to New York (apparently driving their car across the sea floor), but James finally stands up to them and the bugs tie them up with Miss Spider's strings so the NYPD can take them away.