It's been a while since I had a movie marathon day, and last weekend I had the chance to do it again with my wife. It was a Saturday so we went to Cinemaxx and watch this one as our first movie of the day. It was a new movie that just premiered on Friday so it's still quite fresh. Without further ado, below is the story line
Brief Story Line
Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield - Hugo, Ender's Game etc) was a 16 year old teenager who was not having a lot of friends at school and feeling awkward all the time. He was very close to his grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp - Elektra, Valkyrie etc) who used to read him lots of bed time stories since he was still a child about Abe's time spent in Miss Peregrine's home where there would be many peculiar children.
After an incident which traumatized Jake, he had to visit a psychiatrist named Dr. Golan (Allison Janney - Juno, Spy, Finding Dory etc). When Jake received a post card from Abe which told him to go to Wales where Miss Peregrine's home was located, he requested his father Franklin (Chris o'Dowd - Thor: The Dark World) and mother Maryann (Kim Dickens - Fear the Walking Dead TV series) to let him go there. Dr. Golan also suggested that this would be a good idea. So Jake and his father really went to Wales to search for it.
Jake finally located the house, but apparently it was already damaged and nobody stayed there anymore after it was bombed in September 1943 during World War 2. Even the villagers told him that nobody survived the bombing. However, after the second time he went to the house by himself, he met a girl named Emma (Ella Purnell - Maleficent) who he knew from the picture that was shown by his grandfather. And later he saw the rest of the peculiar children. Although he felt confused as all the stories he was told seemed to be true, nevertheless he still followed Emma's request to go to their house and finally met with Ms. Peregrine (Eva Green - Casino Royale, 300: Rise of An Empire etc).
He was introduced with the rest of the peculiar children which included most notably Emma who could control air, Enoch who could resurrect puppets or dead things for a while, Olive who could produce fire, Millard the invisible boy and few others with their own specialty (peculiarity). They were all still alive in the 1943 and were able to avoid the house bombing by Ms Peregrine's equipment that can make a time loop where the whole day would repeat itself and same things would occur (seems a little bit like Groundhog Day?). All the peculiar children were very bored of repeating the whole day over and over again and was very happy to welcome Jake.
Ms. Peregrine finally told the whole story to Jake which involved his grandfather and also the group called Hollow led by Mr. Barron (Samuel L. Jackson - star in soooo many movies) whose aim were to chase the peculiar children by looking for the time loop locations. Ms. Peregrine also requested Jake to protect and be the leader of the peculiar children from the continued chase by Mr. Barron and his monster soldiers.
There were also some noteworthy character of Ms. Avocet (Judi Dench - as M in the latest James Bond series) who was similar to Ms. Peregrine, and also an ornithologist (expert in birds) played by Rupert Everett (My Best Friend's Wedding, Inspector Gadget etc).
So what was the reason for Mr. Barron's chasing the peculiar children? Can Jake protect the peculiar children from Mr. Barron? Could the time loop be maintained and protect the peculiar children from growing old and die due to old age? What was the actual role of Abe in the past? Find them all in this fantasy movie.
End of Brief Story Line
It took more than 2 hours to finally complete this movie and with Tim Burton's directing, you really would see all the fantasies came into live as you would have expected from his previous works which include among others: Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland. So if you are familiar with those movies, then you can imagine what kind of movie this would be.
The pace of the movie was a little bit slow in the beginning but it gradually picked up when we meet the peculiar children and getting faster in the final third. I loved the special effects of this movie and the totally awesome part was the transformation of Ms. Peregrine. Meanwhile the fight scene in the end was quite satisfying, though the real finale was a little bit hard to understand (I guess my imagination was not as big as it used to be).
If you are a fan of fantasy genre where the stars are mainly children and do not mind with dark imagery (as lots of the scenes were done in the location where the sun seemed to be covered with cloud or mist all the time), then this one is definitely your kind of movie. However, if you do not truly enjoy or find Tim Burton's movies too weird, then I would not suggest you to watch this one. There was not a lot of fun scenes where you can laugh, as the funny moments were mostly remarks and a little bit dark humor. So I guess children may not be able to enjoy the movie as they could get bored in the early part of the movie. There were not so many suspenseful or tense scenes. I think this movie is more like a dark fantasy with some adventures kind of movie. The ending did not have a cliffhanger so you would be happy that there is no irritated feeling of having to wait years to see the continuance.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Note:
This movie was made based on the novel written by Ransom Riggs. He had written 2 more books about Ms. Peregrine, so maybe if this movie is really successful, they would probably make a sequel based on the other books. Though looking into the performance of this movie throughout last weekend, I am a little doubtful (No offence). But I could be wrong and the movie become a huge hit and we can see the rest of the stories afterall.
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