Day 38 + 39 - 2/7 + 2/8/09 - Movie #38
BEFORE: I was tired from working long hours at the New York Comic-Con, so I fell asleep 20 minutes into this film, and I didn't wake up again until it was time to get up and go back to the Javits Center. So, it took me 2 days to watch an 80-minute film - instead of being 1 movie ahead, I lost 2 days to the Con, and now I'm 1 movie behind.
THE PLOT: An orphan with terrible aunts for guardians befriends human-like bugs who live inside a giant peach and take the boy on a journey to New York City.
AFTER: Well, it was a little corny, and the acting of the kid who played James was just horrible, but I liked this for the most part. There were story points that didn't make sense, but I blame this on the book by Roald Dahl, which probably didn't make much sense either. Am I wrong to expect a fantasy book to make logical sense? There was a notable voice cast - Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, Jane Leeves - but I didn't recognize any of them during the film. I had to go back and listen again after reading the credits. What's the point of casting Richard Dreyfuss in an animated film if he doesn't sound like himself?
RATING: 5 out of 10 seagulls
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"Peach" blew it for me because of its fundamental trippiness. There are plenty of kids' films that play with the question of "Is any of this really happening? Or is the kid just imagining it all?" That sort of thing has to be carefully navigated. At the end...um...is the filmmaker saying that a giant peach with stopmotion creatures and a stopmotion kid appeared in the middle of the real city?
ReplyDeleteNot a _sucky_ ending. But it's really not a thought-out creative choice. You get high, you rattle off this story, then you go to sleep.