Roald Dahl may have been the twentieth century equivalent of the Brothers Grimm, writing memorable tales for children interspersed with life lessons and a sense of the macabre. All of this comes into play in his book James and the Giant Peach. Disney has just released a two-disc re-mastering of their 1996 film, directed by Henry Selick. Containing a Blu-Ray and a regular DVD, you get all the bells and features one expects from Disney, including a featurette, a game based on the film, trailers and a music video.

The story is of a perfectly happy and normal little British boy, James Henry Trotter (Paul Terry) and his loving parents. Looking forward to going to New York City, the little family is expecting great things, but suddenly all goes horribly wrong when we hear in a voice over that the parents are killed and eaten by a rhinoceros! Sent to live with his odious Aunts Spiker and Sponge (played by Joanna Lumby and Miriam Morgolyes) James is exploited like a Dickens character in a coal black workhouse.  Fate can turn quickly in fairy tales, but a rhinoceros? Roald Dahl knew of sudden transformations. He lost his sister and father in a period of three weeks as a young boy. Long words like rhinoceros are as ridiculous to a young child as appendicitis and pneumonia, and equally scary.

As troubled as his life is, young James remembers the lessons of his mother to look at things from a different perspective and the other which is, you can't lose if you make a pleasant world for yourself and keep it in your heart. Like a message in a bottle, James makes a floating Chinese lantern out of the brochure about the far away land of dreams, New York City, and releases it. That travel guide has some powerful magic in it, for soon James is approached by a tramp that returns the lantern, the inside filled to the brim with magical crocodile tongues. Before James can use one of the green squiggly things, they jump out and screw themselves into the ground at the base of a dead tree. James' disappointment passes as a small and vivid colored peach starts growing. The Aunts see this rapidly expanding fruit as a money making opportunity, and James is once again forced to clean up after the paying customers are gone. Being hungry, the little boy pulls a piece off the peach and eats it, the hole grows bigger, and not having anything interesting for him on the outside, James crawls inside and discovers a new world with friends, fun and possibilities not available to him with his grasping aunts.

I've heard that Roald Dahl didn't think that James and the Giant Peach was filmable. Henry Selick and producer Tim Burton do a magnificent job making this book into a fast paced film. Selick uses three different disciplines to make this movie work. There’s live action with the family, the horrid Aunts, and the end in New York City. For the magic trip inside the peach, the director used stop action photography. The featurette on this DVD said it took a week of filming for one minute of film, and I believe it; the animation is excellent. And to paint the sea and sky during the voyage, CGI was used.  Back in the mid-nineties when this film was made, photography and models looked better than the computer effects, and the director makes good use of this in some of the wilder effects like a storm cloud rhino that threatens James, and a mechanical shark that tries to shoot down the flying peach.

Randy Newman wrote the songs that tie the story together for children and the acting talents of Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, Simon Callow and Jane Leeves do a great job of bringing James' new "family" of bugs to life. With the talents of Roald Dahl, Henry Selick and company, James and the Giant Peach is interesting for viewers of any age.

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