I think I’m about done with adaptations of Young-Adult novels to the cinema. I enjoyed the recent Hunger Games series, but for every good instalment, you get something like The Maze Runner. Ignoring this, I thought I would try and approach Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children with an open mind. After sitting through 2 hours of this, though, I think I might be the next one volunteering as tribute.
The film tells the story of Jake (Asa Butterfield); a young boy whose Grandpa has recently passed. Before his demise, Jake’s Granddad told him of an island he must travel to, and pleaded that he spoke to the enigmatic Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) in order to find out the secrets that led to his untimely death. Against better judgement, Jake departs with his father (Chris O’Dowd) to a small welsh island, in the hope that he’ll meet with the fairy tale figures his late Granddad told him of as a child. I think you know where this is going, but for the sake of mystery, I won’t divulge any more.
Actually, I will, because you shouldn’t watch this. Jake finds the island, meets Miss Peregrine, all of her orphaned children, and hi jinks ensue. Although, if I’m being honest, far fewer hi jinks ensue than I had hoped for; this is a mostly boring movie. The first two-thirds of the film consists of introducing each of the children (a segment that could have been done in a brief montage), and the antagonist isn’t properly introduced to the story until the final act. Sure, there’s rumblings of a villain throughout the movie, but the film largely forgets that it needs some kind of enemy until the very end.
By which point, you really could not care less. Seriously, if you manage to make your audience so bored that not even the appearance of Samuel L. Jackson can lighten things up, then maybe – just maybe – you’ve fucked up. Also, I didn’t pick up on it until after the film ended, but the monsters are called ‘Hollowghasts’. Is this meant to be an incredibly heavy-handed commentary on the Holocaust? Because if so, then that’s just another reason to give it a miss.
I really don’t want to completely berate Miss Peregrine’s, because it’s a Tim Burton movie, and The Nightmare Before Christmas remains one of my favourite childhood films. But no matter how much I dig down, I just can’t think of anything I liked about the film. Even Eva Green, who I usually enjoy, plays nothing more than a ridiculous, grinning cartoon character throughout the entire mess. In fact, there’s not really a single character that stands out as either memorable or noteworthy. Again: how do you waste Samuel L. Jackson?
There’s really not much more to say about Miss Peregrine’s, because it’s such a waste of a reasonably interesting concept. Towards the end of the movie, it begins to become so obsessed with forcing some kind of conflict in that things just become muddled and laughable. There’s even a glimmer of a neat idea when a skeleton army comes to life, but don’t hold out for some cheesy stop-motion to liven things up; it’s nothing more than middling CGI backed by some atrociously placed dance music. And that’s all I have to say about the film: it’s middling at best.
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