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musingswithmax-blog · 8 years ago

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Forgotten Favourites #1 - James and the Giant Peach (First draft- feedback welcomed!)

Initially, an adaptation of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, a 1961 backyard fantasy fairytale that propelled the Welsh-born British novelist into fame as one of the most enduringly popular children's authors of all-time, under the custodianship of Walt Disney Pictures, seems like a fairly challenging proposition. After all, at first glance, the narrative sensibilities of Dahl and Disney, appear to be considerably separate from one another. Walt Disney, the studio that is synonymous with producing the kind of sweet, saccharine, earnest, yet slightly manufactured, and meticulously engineered, family films of wholesomeness and virtuous enchantment, feels like the polar opposite to Roald Dahl; macabre, darkly funny, refreshingly unsentimental, and firmly rooted in the traditions of, say, the Brother's Grimm. However, the association between Roald Dahl and Walt Disney goes back, almost, to the Golden Age of the studio, ushered in by the success of 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Written and published in 1943, for Walt Disney Productions, Roald Dahl created his first children's book, The Gremlins, as the basis for a feature-length animated film that was unfortunately, never made. Precise reasons as to why the project was eventually abandoned by the studio, is largely unknown, some citing that Walt Disney Productions had difficulty securing the rights for Dahl's material. Others, have sourced that due to the heavy involvement from the British Air Ministry, Dahl insisted that he had final approval over script and production, during his leave from his wartime posting in Washington. Either way, it was, interestingly, Disney who enabled Dahl, to discover his innate talent at children's fiction. There was, almost, the union of two creative masterminds; that sadly, never came to fruition.

So, this dovetails nicely to the 1996 Disney adaptation of James and the Giant Peach. Fifty-three years after the studio tried to adapt a story and characters conceived by Dahl, they try once again, with stop-motion animation alumni, Henry Selick, at the helm. This time, without the aid of promotional material made specifically for the film; but, instead, with an already well-loved, but controversial, children's novel, which was already, the regular target of censors. In addition, the film was produced as a follow-up to the 1993 cult classic, The Nightmare Before Christmas, with much of that film's creative talent, all returning to reimagine the spirit of Roald Dahl, through an ambitious hybridisation of live-action, stop-motion, and cell animation. The result is, whilst an, at times, wildly uneven film, James and the Giant Peach may be the closest a major motion picture has come to truly capturing the essence of Roald Dahl's work. Neither a complete bowdlerisation of the original story, such as Nicholas Roeg's The Witches (1990), or, a retelling that is a little too removed from the book's overall tone, such as the beloved Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, that was nevertheless, loathed by Dahl himself, Disney's James sits comfortably in-between; adheres to both, the lighter sensibilities of a Disney family film in the 90's, and the darker echoes of Dahl.

Perhaps, where the film struggles to fully capture the free-floating whimsy of the book, is with it's live-action sequences. Whilst there is, an impressive level of attention paid to recreate the visual style of US illustrator Nancy Ekholm Bukert's illustrations for the first American editions of the book, they often, bring the pacing of the movie to a grinding halt.

Complete version, coming soon! Please, leave feedback, if you’d like to see the full analysis.

#Disney RoaldDahl JamesandtheGiantPeach Animation Blog Review

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