Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and quite scary fantasy violence
By Derrick Bang
It would be difficult to imagine
a more perfect marriage of imaginative picto-fiction and eccentric filmmaking
sensibilities.
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| All dressed up and ready for ... we know not what: from left, Olive (Lauren McCrostie), Claire (Raffiella Chapman), the invisible Millard (Cameron King), the Twins (Thomas and Joseph Odwell) and Emma (Ella Purnell). |
Author Ransom Riggs’ neo-gothic Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
was released to acclaim in the summer of 2011, spending well over a year on The New York Times’ Children’s Best
Sellers list. It occupies a niche that blossomed with the 2007 arrival of Brian
Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret,
brought to the big screen with panache by director Martin Scorsese.
Tim Burton has just done the same
with Miss Peregrine, and if the
results aren’t quite as impressive,
it’s a beguiling near-miss. This new film also plays to one of Burton’s career
themes: the importance of responding with kindness and grace to the misfits in
our world, as opposed to shunning or fearing them.
Scripter Jane Goldman — boasting
oodles of fan cred for her handling of Kingsman,
Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and two of the
X-Men films — has faithfully retained
both the core plot of Riggs’ unusual narrative, as well as its mythical,
off-kilter and slightly morbid atmosphere.
That’s no small feat: As with The Invention of Hugo Cabret, much of Miss Peregrine’s appeal lies in the manner in which the story unfolds, and
how Riggs chooses to tell it.
Both books also cleverly exploit
actual world history, transporting readers to pivotal eras that are both
simpler and more dangerous.
And, perhaps best of all, both
books evoke the imaginative blend of words and images that was much more common
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, led by fantasists such as Lewis
Carroll, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. It would be nice if modern readers — of all ages — grew more tolerant of books
with pictures.
Rather drolly, both film
adaptations share the same young star.
Miss Peregrine begins in present-day Tampa,
Florida, as teenage Jake (Asa Butterfield) discovers that his beloved
grandfather, Abraham (Terence Stamp), has died — or been killed — under sinister
circumstances. Jake finds the body in the woods near Abraham’s house, and is
horrified to discover that his grandfather’s eyes are missing. Worse yet, Jake
briefly glimpses a huge something
lurking nearby, in the mist.
