Tim Burton at his understated best (partly because Johnny Depp's not in it).
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Grade: B +
Director: Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands)
Screenplay: Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass), based on the novel written by Ransom Riggs
Cast: Asa Butterfield (Hugo), Eva Green (Casino Royale)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hr 7 min.
by John DeSando
“If I show you the rest you have to promise not to run away.” Emma (Ella Purnell)
We do see the rest, and no one left the theater. Director Tim Burton has now caught the sensible imagining I found so endearing in Edward Scissorhands but lost in many of his wild stories since then. It’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an action fantasy to be enjoyed by the whole family because if you understand the basics of the time-travel genre, you will enjoy this trip to 1943, WWII, and a home where kids have specific special powers while the horror of war knocks on their door.
Burton has a light touch as he emphasizes Jake’s (Asa Butterfield) teen search for wonder and family—specifically going from Florida to Wales to find the home and to verify the fantastic stories his ailing grandfather (Terence Stamp) told him about the home ant its fantastic denizens.
The most fabulous would have to be Miss Peregrine, Angelina-Jolie- Wicked like but much kinder, who can shift into a falcon when needed. Her motherly treatment of the children, who could stand for special needs as well as gifted, is a core of the film’s charm.
The children, with Jake’s help, fight off Nazi-like enemy, Barron (Samuel L. Jackson), with his monsters called “hollowgasts,” who seek their eyes to become human again and I suppose to keep the kids from knowing about the Holocaust. Although each special power is featured, not so much the defining characters of most of them outside of the leads.
A major thrust of the story, however, is to show how Jacob can connect with his grandpa’s past and also massage his creative powers to discover what his “peculiar” is. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is a fantasy that Tim Burton has quietly crafted for all of as he reminds us our inherent wonderment and the reality of a war that changed us forever, no matter what time we travel to.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
