Roald Dahl Classic #1

James and the Giant Peach

Source: laughingplace.com

Starring:  Paul Terry, Joanna Lumley, Miriam Margolyes, Pete Postlethwaite
Year: 1996
Running Time:  76 minutes

Roald Dahl remains one of my favourite authors.  His stories might have been aimed primarily at children but they are even more entertaining and amusing when read with adult eyes.  I got my first taste of Roald Dahl when I was in Grade 4 (Standard 2 back then), courtesy of my amazing teacher, Mrs Bailey, who read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the class.  My imagination was stimulated and I subsequently ravenously devoured anything by Mr Dahl.  I now own all of his books, and am on my way to owning all of the cinematic interpretations of his work.   I recently acquired James and the Giant Peach, a delightful film about a boy who is able to escape his dismal reality and travel to the city of his dreams, NYC - in a giant peach!

At the start of the film, little ginger-haired James (Paul Terry) is living "a cosy life by the sea" with his mother and father.  His parents are planning a trip to New York city, a city where dreams come true.  However, tragedy strikes when his parents are killed by a rhinoceros and James is sent to live with his horrid aunts, Spiker and Sponge.  Joanna Lumley is barely recognisable as the hideous Aunt Spiker while Miriam Margolyes is equally revolting as Aunt Sponge.  The two of them speak in rhymes, much like the witches of Macbeth, and make life miserable for James.

However, James' life changes when he meets a strange man (Pete Postlethwaite) who offers him a bag filled with luminescent wriggly things, which contain powerful magic.  James trips and the worm-like creatures enter the soil.  The hideous aunts spot a peach growing on a dead tree.  The peach keeps growing and growing and the aunts decide to profit from this marvel of nature by charging money for people to look at the giant peach.

Later James takes a bite of the juicy fruit without realising that is has one of the green magic things in it.  He crawls into the peach and is transformed into an animated version of himself.   Once inside the peach, he meets an eclectic group of bugs including:  a hearing impaired glow worm, a motherly lady bug (with polka dotted bloomers that match her dotted wings), a posh cricket wearing a monocle, a French-spider (complete with beret and black-and-white striped body), a visually impaired earthworm and a tough-talking centipede from Brooklyn.

The centipede decides they need to break free from the tree - and the oppression of the two aunts - and chews through the stalk attaching the peach to the tree, thereby setting them on a life-changing journey to the place where dreams come true.  On the way they have to survive a mechanical shark, a ship wreck haunted by pirate ghosts and an ominous storm cloud that threatens to throw them off course.

Some of my favourite parts of the film include:

• the spider's tiny high-heeled boots
• the peach feast
• "He's committing pesticide"
• their arrival in NYC
• the drenched aunties arriving in their banged-up car
• the fact that they end up living in a giant peach pit in Central Park

In the film, James has to face his fears head-on, following the advice of his father to look at things in another way, and in doing so conquers those fears.  He also finds his voice and speaks up for himself for the first time.  Therefore the story has a great message for young children (and adults for that matter) who are weighed down by fear:  "marvelous things will happen" if you are willing to let go.