Produced and directed by the team behind The Nightmare Before Christmas, James the Giant Peach is based on the book of the same name by Roald Dahl.
After James’s (Paul Terry) parents die, via rhino (totally makes sense!), he’s sent to live with his abusive aunts. After acquiring boiled magical crocodile tongues from a complete stranger and acting like that’s totally normal, James drops them, after being explicitly told not, to, and crocodile scatter everywhere causing a nearby peach to grow to gigantic proportions. One night, he crawls inside the giant peach where he meets several new bug friends, including the spider he was kind to, and the unlikely group of friends travel to New York City. In the end, he manages to escape his horrible aunts and the bugs officially adopt him and raise him as their own because that’s not strange at all!
This movie is fun once you leave the dark live-action world for the animated one. Some of the songs are pretty good. I remember liking this movie a lot more when I was a kid. This movie vastly pales in comparison to The Nightmare Before Christmas which I prefer over this. There’s one use of the word ass and one innuendo. This movie is not necessarily a Halloween movie but is creepy and trademark Tim Burton odd enough for it to to included in the Halloween collection on Disney Plus.
Another day, another not-so-scary Halloween pick. This time for Disney’s 2003 remake of Freaky Friday. Body swaps count because I said so! I review (for the most part) family-friendly fare. If you’re looking for something more hardcore, you’ve come to the wrong account!
You’ve heard about walking in another’s shoes, but what if you could walk around in another person’s body?
Mother and daughter duo Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Anna (Lindsay Lohan) don’t see eye to eye. At all. Neither takes the time to understand where the other is coming from or even tries to. Things really fall apart when Anna wants to audition for Wango Tango with her friends, but the audition takes place on the same day as Tess’s wedding rehearsal dinner. A well-meaning Chinese woman interferes and gives them a fortune cookie, that once eaten, body swaps them indefinitely. They must learn to love each other selflessly before they’re allowed to switch back, and due to Tess’s wedding being the next day, they have 24 hours to figure things out. No pressure!
This movie is hysterical! I haven’t watched it in years and forgotten how funny it was. It’s one of the best. I shouldn’t have waited so long to rewatch it! A PG movie has PG issues including the misuse of God’s name, immodest outfits, and occasional language. This movie is fun for the whole family especially if you have older kids. You can stream it now on Disney Plus.
Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) gets hit by a meteor on her wedding day transforming her into a giant. Considered to be a threat by the government, she’s taken to Area 51 and locked away with the rest of the monsters. Soon after being imprisoned, the government decides to use their monsters to defeat an alien hell-bent on destroying Earth in what is obviously one of Dreamworks’s more realistic plots.
This movie isn’t the best that Dreamworks has to offer, but it’s fun. The characters are great and probably the best part of the whole thing. If you’ve ever wondered what House MD. sounds like as a mad scientist cockroach, or what Dwight Shrute sounds like as an evil alien, now’s your chance! The story is crazy but entertaining. This could’ve had franchise potential, but unfortunately Dreamworks, go that route. A sequel could’ve been good. It has a bit of adult humor and PG substitutes for swear words. Other than that, content-wise it’s fine. Rent it online, or borrow it from the library.
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