James and the Giant Peach (film)
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| James and the Giant Peach | |
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 James and the Giant Peach film poster |
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| Directed by | Henry Selick |
| Produced by | Tim Burton Denise Di Novi |
| Written by | Steven Bloom, Karey Kirkpatrick, Jonathan Roberts (screenplay) Roald Dahl (book) |
| 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 date(s) | April 12, 1996 |
| Running time | 84 min. |
| Country |  United Kingdom United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $38,000,000 USD (estimated) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
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.
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[edit] Story
James used to live with his mother and father until a rhino took them away. 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.
[edit] 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
[edit] Awards
The movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score (by Randy Newman), but did not win.
[edit] Trivia
- 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 another poem written by Dahl in his 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.
- Both Joanna Lumley and Richard Dreyfuss both starred in the romantic comedy, the Goodbye Girl.
[edit] 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, 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 dove down into an icy ocean to find a compass) from a crew of undead 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 Rhinoceros' – representing James's fear, as his parents have been eaten by a rhino – seems to replace them.
- 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, oddly enough), 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.
