The hero is a 9-year-old orphan James, who's forced to live with his nasty aunts Spiker and Sponge. A stranger presents James with a bag of magical "crocodile tongues." When James accidentally spills the contents at the foot of a dead peach tree, a giant peach starts to grow.

James' aunts immediately charge the public to view the freak object and forbid James to go near it. Despondent, James takes a bite of the fruit one night, unaware of a magical spiral slipping into his mouth. A tunnel appears in the peach and James enters a whole new world, where he meets six lively creepy-crawlies. James persuades them to go to New York City and an epic voyage begins, full of dangers, hardships and funny moments. -- Rita Kempley

By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
April 12, 1996

It's always exciting when a children's movie breaks away from the regular pack of such cookie-cutter cartoons as "All Dogs Go to Heaven 2" or films about fuzzy dogs or adorable sea lions. In 1993, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was such a film, with its distinctive stop-motion animation, a gloom-and-doomy sense of fun and imaginatively weird characters.

Now, producer Tim Burton and director Henry Selick, who made "Nightmare," have broken out again. "James and the Giant Peach," adapted from the Roald Dahl storybook, is imaginative, slightly creepy, but tremendously appealing to all ages. It's ripe to bursting with visual effects a heady combination of stop-motion and computer-generated imagery. And it has a delightful cast of personable bugs and larvae, all bound for New York City via floating fruit.

The hero is a 9-year-old human orphan called James (Paul Terry), who's forced to live with his nasty aunts Spiker (Joanna Lumley) and Sponge (Miriam Margolyes). This miserable existence changes for the better when a genial stranger (Pete Postlethwaite) presents James with a bag of green, glowing, spirally objects-crocodile tongues. When James accidentally spills the contents at the foot of a dead peach tree, a giant peach starts to grow.

Witnessing this, James's money-grubbing aunts immediately charge the public to view the freak object and forbid James to go near it. Despondent, James takes a bite of the fruit one night, unaware of one last magical spiral slipping into his mouth. A tunnel appears in the peach and James (suddenly transformed into a stop-motion character) enters a whole new world, where he meets six lively creepy-crawlies.

There's Centipede (voiced by Richard Dreyfuss), a cigar-chewing born hustler; Earthworm (David Thewlis), a pessimistic wriggler; Ladybug (Jane Leeves from "Frasier"), a maternally protective soul in a polka-dot dress; the rather batty Glowworm (Margolyes again); the erudite, fiddle-playing Grasshopper (Simon Callow); and Spider (Susan Sarandon), a seductively voiced arachnid.

James, who gets along famously with this bunch, persuades them to go to New York City. The boy has wanted to visit the Big Apple ever since his father told him it was the city of realized dreams. For the rest, the city promises a haven of tunnels and dark hidey-holes. Severing the peach from its branch and evading the clutches of James's nasty aunts, they roll toward the Atlantic Ocean.

An epic voyage begins, full of dangers, hardships, funny moments and stirring songs by composer Randy Newman. James shows his resourcefulness by lassoing 100 sea gulls and making them pull the pulpy vessel. But the friends have to evade a metallic, mechanized shark that sends teeth-chomping missiles to sever those strands. Later, there's a wonderful underwater scene in which Centipede plunges into the deep in search of a compass. ("Good heavens!" exclaims a bewildered Grasshopper when Centipede dives over the side. "He's committed pesticide!") There, he discovers a sunken pirate ship and Jack Skellington of "Nightmare" fame, enjoying a cameo as a ghost sea captain.

The 45 minutes of animation in this 80-minute Walt Disney movie took two years to make, with 130 technicians working full-time. But the blood, sweat and tears were clearly worth the effort. The special effects are unforgettable; they even eclipse "Nightmare." With last year's successful release of the equally brilliant "Babe" and "Toy Story," it would seem to be real smart (let alone the right thing to do) to make many more of these imaginative projects. Let's hope there are many more to come: The kids-and the grown-ups, for that matter-are waiting.

JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH (PG) Contains nasty treatment of a child by adults and a scary metal shark.

By Hal Hinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
April 12, 1996

"James and the Giant Peach," the delicious new film from Disney animator Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas"), is the latest in an impressive string of first-rate movies for kids.

Based on the popular 1961 children's book by Roald Dahl, the movie is as wondrous as "A Little Princess" (which also presents the imagination as an escape from harsh reality), as innovative as "Toy Story" and as endearing as "Babe." (Well, almost.)

Like the adventures of that justly famous pig, this visually intoxicating film begins when its 9-year-old British hero, James (Paul Terry), is separated from his beloved family. He is sent to live with a pair of evil aunts, Spiker and Sponge (Joanna Lumley, from "Absolutely Fabulous," and Miriam Margolyes).

In this case, though, James's parents were gobbled up by a giant rhinoceros in the sky, and if James doesn't behave, his aunts tell him, it's coming back to get him, too.

As bleak as this sounds, James does have an outlet-his crayons-and with them he creates a whole world of his own. One day, while James is attending to his chores, a stranger (Pete Postlethwaite) gives him a paper bag full of crawly green crocodile tongues that he says are capable of making wondrous things happen. James accidentally drops the bag and the magic tongues scatter everywhere, and one wiggles its way inside a peach hanging alone on a branch. Instantly, the fuzzy fruit begins to grow and grow until, finally, it's the size of a house.

This first part of the film-in which James is a real flesh-and-blood boy-is a sort of live-action prologue. But when James takes a whopping bite out of the giant peach, one of the magic tongues causes a tunnel to open up in its side. And, as James crawls toward the center of the peach, he is transformed somehow into a puppet. Once James arrives at the center, he discovers a group of insects, as large as he is, hanging around the pit.

At this point, Selick's off-kilter creativity begins to soar. Before he was rhinocerosed, James's father used to tell him that New York was the place where dreams came true. And, together with Grasshopper (Simon Callow), Centipede (Richard Dreyfuss), Ladybug (Jane Leeves), Glowworm (Miriam Margolyes) and Spider (Susan Sarandon, doing her sexiest Marlene Dietrich), James commandeers the Peach, leashes a flock of migrating sea gulls for power and sets out across the Atlantic for the Big Apple.

Along the way, the Peach and its crew drift off course, landing at the North Pole, and have to fight off a vicious mechanized shark. Randy Newman has written a handful of funky-bouncy songs that Selick and company stage as full-fledged puppet musical numbers. The puppets themselves are not just amazing-looking, they're remarkably expressive as well (especially the bugs). By modern standards, the stop-action technique the film employs is Jurassic compared with the computer-generated stuff most animators have embraced. In this instance, though, doing it the old-fashioned way gives the film and its creatures an appealing handmade quality. Also, Selick's shadowed sensibility dovetails nicely with Dahl's lurking menace.

In making "James and the Giant Peach," Selick has reunited with producers Tim Burton and Denise DiNova, the same creative team that worked on "Nightmare." So far, they've made two films together, and both are destined to become classics.