JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH (1996)

Cast

Plot

An adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic story. The animated central section is sandwiched by stylised live-action sequences and it beautifully captures the book's free-floating, fantastic sense of adventure and wonder. Forced into a life of drudgery by his evil aunts, Sponge and Spiker (Margolyes and Lumley), orphan James dreams of escape to New York. An old man (Postlethwaite) appears and gives the boy a jigging handful of fluorescent, magical crocodile tongues, a dead peach tree bears a gigantic fruit, and diving Alice-like into its core, James enters a world of strange invertebrates. As his wishes take flight, so does the peach, putting to sea and soaring up in the air, hauled majestically by a flock of tethered sea-gulls. A wonderful world of adventure with an enchanting, at times ghoulish, appeal.