Director Tim Burton at first glance seems a perfect fit for
“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” a mystical fantasy adventure
about a group of extraordinary children born with bizarre abilities — a sort of
gothic X-Men. Burton’s sensibilities may be a nice match for the material, but
the resulting film ends up fitting squarely into the realm of the director’s
disappointing recent output (Burton hasn’t made a truly great film since 2007’s
“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”).
Based on the Young Adult novel by Ransom Riggs, the story
follows Jake (Asa Butterfield), a Florida teenager who’s dissatisfied with his
ordinary, humdrum life. Inspired by the tales of adventure told to him as a
child by his beloved grandfather, Abe (Terence Stamp), Jake longs to be an
explorer, despite his father (played by Chris O’Dowd, sporting an American
accent) constantly puncturing those dreams by telling him that there’s nothing
left to discover.
But when Abe is found murdered, Jake sets out in search of
answers at the Welsh orphanage run by the mysterious Miss Alma LeFay Peregrine (Eva Green), where his grandfather spent
his childhood. Traveling with his father, Jake does indeed manage to locate the
orphanage, and learns that it offers sanctuary to Miss Peregrine’s young wards,
who’ve been ostracized by society for their unusual powers: invisibility,
weightlessness, the ability to light fires with a single touch, and, eh, being
filled with bees. It soon becomes clear that the same evil force that killed
Abe is now after the children, and Jake is called upon to become a sort of
protector to these so-called “peculiars.” In the process, he discovers he’s
perhaps not so ordinary after all.
Despite its darkly whimsical themes, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for
Peculiar Children” ends up being a bit of a slog to get through. Its story
feels cobbled together from familiar parts, and bound together by a convoluted
mythology (which includes time travel). Though the script is constantly
explaining itself, the details often remain inscrutable. I’m sure it’s all much
easier to comprehend in novel form.
Eva Green has the ability to invigorate even the worst movies
she’s appeared in, and she manages to do so once again here, even though she’s
given frustratingly little to do. Meanwhile Samuel L. Jackson hams it up as the
villainous Mr. Barron, who has a plot to wipe out the peculiars and feast on
their eyeballs (it’s complicated).
None of the children are given much personality outside of
their particular abilities, so most don’t have the opportunity to really
register as characters. Still, there’s some fun, creepy visuals (this is a Tim
Burton film after all), including a fun, Ray Harryhausen-style
climactic battle in which an army of skeletons goes up against the menacing
monsters that carry out Mr. Barron’s bidding.
With its message that magic and enchantment exist if you just
know where to look for it, the film treads similar terrain as Burton’s “Big
Fish,” another story that centered on tales passed down between generations.
But for a film with such insistence on explaining the wonder of the world, any
actual wonder is in distressingly short supply.
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2016.
