A TEXTBOOK EXERCISE IN BOREDOM AND DISAPPOINTMENT
Director: Tim Burton
Starring: Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Ella Purnell, Samuel L. Jackson, Rupert Everett, Allison Janney, Terence Stamp, Chris O’Dowd and Judi Dench
Rated: PG
Studio: 20th Century Fox Studios
Running Time: 2 Hrs, 7 Mins.
Ever since Harry Potter became a stratospheric success, studios have been desperately searching for the next book series to adapt into a blockbusting cash cow. Sometimes these efforts have met with success (Hunger Games) but quite often they’ve fallen flat (Mortal Instruments, Divergent, Percy Jackson). Not only was 20th Century Fox hoping that their adaptation of the popular Miss Peregrine novels would be a much needed financial success, but would also launch a profitable new franchise. And after the rough summer Fox had, you can bet every studio exec had every appendage crossed.
But Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children doesn’t just fall flat; it never even truly gets on its feet.
Video: 20th Century Fox
After losing his beloved grandfather (Terrence Stamp), Jake (Asa Butterfield) falls into a deep depression. To shake him out of it, he and his largely uninterested father (Chris O’Dowd) take a trip to a tiny Welsh town seeking closure. Jake is drawn to the ruins of an orphanage destroyed during the Second World War, looking for traces of the fantastic characters his grandfather often spoke and wrote of. It isn’t long before Jake stumbles across the infamous Miss Peregrine herself (Eva Green), along with the “Peculiar” children in her charge.
The Peculiars possess both incredible abilities (flight, metamorphosis, etc.) and physical deformities (a fang filled maw on in the back of the head). They hide in “loops” scattered across the world, temporal pockets where they live the same day over and over again. They don’t only hide from the persecution of the outside world, but also from the Hollows, former Peculiars twisted into horrific monsters by an experiment gone wrong. Seeking immortality, the Hollows hunt and feed on Peculiar children. And lead by the nefarious Barron (Samuel L. Jackson), they’ve been hunting Miss Peregrine and her children across entire centuries.
In short, Miss Peregrine is the X-Men meets Harry Potter. The powers and deformities the Peculiars possess are the result of a recessive gene and they have to hide from a world that has relentlessly persecuted them (sound familiar?). But while Marvel’s Children of the Atom have fantastic abilities and super powers, the Peculiars possess more eerie and frightening gifts (children who have to wear masks because they’re horrific faces will turn you to stone, a boy who can animate and control creepy dolls by implanting them with fake hearts). The worst part isn’t so much that the cinematic version of Miss Peregrine seems to be such an unoriginal cocktail of rehashed ideas, but that it doesn’t even aspire to any level of originality.
This is a surprising shortcoming from a Tim Burton film. Whether it’s a hit or a miss, you can always tell you’re watching a Burton film by the visual texture. But not only is Peregrine missing Burton’s long time collaborator Johnny Depp, but also his trademark visual style as well. It’s clumsily edited and the pacing is forced and predictable. There are no surprises at all in this movie and even if you haven’t read the book you can guess what’s coming next.
There’s no sense of awe or wonder either. When we first met Harry Potter, we shared his wide-eyed journey as he discovered a fantastic and dangerous new world. Harry’s first few movies were masterfully crafted so the audience could share his exploration of this fantastic new reality and his place in it. But Jake’s unraveling of the mystery in Peregrine is about as magical and enjoyable as reading a math textbook. There’s no wonder or sense of adventure. He already knows most of the Peculiars by name when he meets them for the first time and is seemingly unimpressed by most of their fantastic abilities.
Jackson chews up the scenes he’s in as the malevolent Barron, adding the movie’s only real comedic moments, but he’s only a supporting character and all the other performances honestly feel mailed in. Green looks like she’s giving a class in facial expressions and is unconvincing in her role as an all-knowing, time bending guardian. Dame Judi Dench is barely in it (did she owe someone a favour?) and while Butterfield may have an excellent career in front of him, he lacks the screen presence to carry a movie at this point in time.
The story has a weak cookie cutter feel to it and is its own worst enemy. The plot gives everything away entire acts before it happens. There is no romantic tension because it predicts the obligatory (and obvious) relationship in the first act. Multiple times. The tension Jake quickly develops with a rival is formulaic and fails to be genuine. And if you thought the recent Terminator movies were horrible at telling time travel stories, Miss Peregrine may have the most confusing, head scratching and even laziest explanation for using time travel as a story telling device you’ve ever seen. It’s this failure that helps rob the ending of its emotional impact (plus the fact that a blind man can see the ending twenty miles away).
There are a few impressive visuals (particularly the Hollows) and the climactic fight scene between the Peculiar children and Barron’s forces is amusing, but there’s very little in this movie that will impress you. It’s a movie with a deeply flawed story that barely goes through the motions. Fans of the book series by Ransom Briggs will likely be disappointed and it’s something that Burton, whose already raised some eyebrows with his comments on diversity in Hollywood, would be well advised to leave off his resume. If you think Miss Peregrine looks interesting, maybe give the book a try first.
Photo: 20th Century Fox Studios
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