James and the Giant Peach: Critic Reviews

James and the Giant Peach, the latest animated film from Disney, is a technological marvel, arch and innovative with a daringly offbeat visual conception. But it's also a strenuously artful film with a macabre edge that may scare small children.

A stunner with a breathtaking array of eye-teasers.

The latest in an impressive string of first-rate movies for kids.

It's ripe to bursting with visual effects a heady combination of stop-motion and computer-generated imagery.

It will, I think, entertain kids for whom stop-motion animation is the last thing they're thinking about.

An extraordinary achievement.

This weird story has been transformed into a playful, visually arresting experience with more than a few allusions to The Wizard of Oz.

We fully anticipate the wrath of several generations of possessive children when we declare that the new Disney film of James and the Giant Peach is an improvement on Roald Dahl's 1961 backyard fantasy.

In general the magic as well as the heart of Roald Dahl's novel has remained stubbornly on the page, leaving us with this overly mechanical copy, as appetizing as a once-flavorful peach that's been in cold storage for far too long.

Fabulous adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic book.

Captures the author's spirit, creating a film with not only whimsical creatures but very real emotions.

Inventively animated yet hopelessly uneven...

an imperfect film by Henry Selick is still a wonderment, and better than 90% of anything else out there [and] the intricately detailed animation is rendered with Selick's trademark piquance and energy

a mixture of live-action and stop-motion animation that is heavy on fever-dream spectacle, but fairly shallow in terms of character

Doesn't quite click on all levels, and the story and character development feels truncated, but there's still plenty to enjoy about its weird occurrences. [Blu-ray]

The film's a technical tour de force, with flawless stop-motion animation and some imaginatively realized live-action sequences. What's surprising here is how much of Dahl's misogyny is allowed to surface.

This irresistibly mad plot and the superb animation is only slightly let down by some of Randy Newman's more forgettable compositions.

Despite a lightness of plot, it most beautifully captures the book's free-floating, fantastic sense of adventure and wonder.

A very satisfying movie.

The animated segments are wonderful, but they jar badly with the ill-conceived live-action pieces which open and close the film.