Harry Potter and the Giant Peach

Harry Potter and the Giant Peach is a 2012 British-American musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick, based on the 2005 novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It was produced by Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi. The film is a combination of live action and stop-motion animation.

Plot
In the 1930s, Harry Potter is a young boy who lives with his parents by the sea in the United Kingdom. On Harry's birthday, they plan to go to London and visit the Big Ben, the biggest building in the world. However, his parents are later killed by a ghostly rhinoceros from the sky and finds himself living with his two neglectful dursleys, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia.

He is forced to work all day and they threaten him with beatings to keep him in line and taunt him about the mysterious rhino and other hazards if he tries to leave.

While rescuing a pony from being killed by the dursleys, Harry meets a mysterious man with a bag of magic green "crocodile tongues", which he gives to Harry to make his life better. The captain warns him not to lose the "tongues" and disappears. When Harry is returning to the house, he trips and the "tongues" escape into the ground.

A peach is soon found on a withered old tree, and expands into immense proportions. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia then use the giant peach as an attraction, making lots of money as Harry watches from the house, not permitted to leave. That night, Harry is sent to pick up the garbage. While doing so, he grabs a chunk of the peach to eat as one of the "crocodile tongues" unknowingly jumps into it. A large hole appears inside the peach and Harry crawls inside, where he finds and befriends a group of anthropomorphic animals who also dream of an ideal home (Thomas O'Malley the Orange Cat, Bugs Bunny, Kaa the Brown Snake, Twilight Sparkle the Purple Pony, Kanga the Brown Kangaroo, and Dorothy the Green Dinosaur), and is also turned into a more animated form. As they hear the aunts search for Harry, Bugs Bunny manages to cut the stem connecting the giant peach to the tree and the peach rolls away to the Atlantic Ocean with Harry and his friends inside it, seemingly crushing Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's antique car as they try to chase it.

Remembering his dream to visit London, Harry and the animals decide to go there with Bugs Bunny steering the peach claiming he sailed the world as a "Commodore". They use Twilight Sparkle's strings to capture and tie a hundred seagulls to the peach stem, while battling against a giant robotic shark. They escape just in time. While flying, Harry and his friends eventually find themselves hungry and soon realize that "their whole ship is made out of food". After gorging most of the inside of the peach, Twilight Sparkle, while using her bed to tuck in James, reveals to him that she was the pony he saved from Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. Harry then has a nightmare of him as a kitten attacked by Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and a spray the dursleys used that resembles the rhino. When he wakes up, he and his friends find themselves in The Arctic, lost and cold. Bugs Bunny has fallen asleep while keeping watch, resulting in them drifting further away from their expected destination. It is then revealed that the Bugs Bunny has never traveled the world and has lived on two pages of the National Geographic. After hearing Thomas O'Malley wishing they had a compass, Bugs Bunny jumps off the peach into the icy water below and searches a sunken ship for a compass but is taken prisoner by a group of skeletal pirates. Harry Potter and Twilight Sparkle rescue him and the journey continues.

As the group finally reaches London, a storm appears. A flash of lightning reveals the rhino approaching them. Harry is frightened but faces his fears and gets his friends to safety before the rhino strikes the peach with lightning; The strings keeping the seagulls attached to the peach break and Harry and the peach both fall to the city below. Harry coughs up the crocodile tongue as he reawakens, transforms back into his normal form, and emerges from the peach realizing it has landed directly on top of the Big Ben.

After being rescued by police officers, firefighters, and the largest crane in London, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia arrive, supposedly having driven their car across the seabed, and attempt to claim Harry and the peach. Harry stands up to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, revealing their abusive behavior towards him to the crowd, who gasp in shock at the revelation. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia become enraged by Harry's betrayal and attempt to kill Harry. Using the remaining seagulls, the animals arrive in London. They tie up Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia with Twilight Sparkle's strings and the two dursleys are taken away. Harry introduces his friends and allows the children of London to eat up the peach.

The peach pit is made into a house in Hyde Park, where Harry lives with the animals and has the friends he could wish for. Bugs Bunny runs for the Mayor of London, Thomas O'Malley becomes a professional violinist, Kaa becomes a mascot for a new cream, Kanga becomes an obstetrician, Dorothy feed the birds at St Paul's Cathedral, Twilight Sparkle owns a nightclub called "Pony Club", and Harry celebrates his 12th birthday with his new family.

In a post-credits scene, a new arcade game called "Spike the Dursleys" is shown, featuring the rhino.

Cast

 * Paul Terry as James Henry Trotter
 * Susan Turner-Cray as James' Mother
 * Steven Culp as James' Father
 * Miriam Margolyes as aunt Sponge
 * Joanna Lumley as aunt Spiker
 * Pete Postlethwaite as Magic Man/Narrator

Voices

 * Simon Callow as Grasshopper
 * Richard Dreyfuss as Centipede
 * Jeff Bennett as Centipede (singing voice)
 * Jane Leeves as Ladybug
 * Susan Sarandon as Miss Spider
 * David Thewlis as Earthworm
 * Miriam Margolyes as the Glowworm

Songs

 * My Name Is James - Paul Terry
 * That's the Life For Me - Jeff Bennett, Susan Sarandon, Jane Leeves, Miriam Margolyes, Simon Callow, and David Thewlis
 * Eating the Peach - Jeff Bennett, Susan Sarandon, Jane Leeves, Miriam Margolyes, Simon Callow, David Thewlis, and Paul Terry
 * Family - Simon Callow, Jeff Bennett, Jane Leeves, David Thewlis, Susan Sarandon, Miriam Margolyes, and Paul Terry
 * Good News - Randy Newman

Production
The film begins with normal live-action for the first 20 minutes,[1] but becomes stop-motion animation after James enters the peach, and then live-action when James enters New York City, New York (although the mutated insect characters remained in stop-motion). Selick had originally planned for James to be a real actor through the entire film, then later considered doing the whole film in stop-motion, but ultimately settled on doing entirely live-action and entirely stop-motion sequences because of costs.[2] Unlike the novel, James' aunts are not killed by the rolling peach (though his parents' deaths also occur like the novel) and follow him to New York, and the film also has James dream of going to New York instead of simply winding up there.[1]

Reception
Though Roald Dahl declined numerous offers to have a film version of James and the Giant Peach produced during his lifetime, his widow, Liccy, approved an offer to have a live action version produced. She thinks Roald "would have been delighted with what they did with James. It is a wonderful film."[3]

James and the Giant Peach received near-universal acclaim from film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 93% based on reviews from 69 critics, with a "Certified Fresh" rating and an average score of 7.2/10. The site's consensus states: "The arresting and dynamic visuals, offbeat details and light-as-air storytelling make James and the Giant Peach solid family entertainment".[4]

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, praising the animated part, but calling the live-action segments "crude."[5] Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "a technological marvel, arch and innovative with a daringly offbeat visual conception" and "a strenuously artful film with a macabre edge."[6]

Awards
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score, by Randy Newman. It won Best Animated Feature Film at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

Home media
A digitally restored Blu-ray/DVD combo pack was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on August 3, 2010 in the United States.[7]