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Made by the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, this has an enchanting, at times ghoulish, appeal.

Dir: Henry Selnick / UK / USA / 1996 / 79mins / Cert: PG

An adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic story, Selick’s film may not have made any spectacular technical advance on his previous work (the animated central section is sandwiched by stylised live-action sequences), but, despite a lightness of plot, it most 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. The songs and music have the inimitable signature of Randy Newman. © Time Out

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