Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Review.

So here is a movie review for Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.   Directed by Tim Burton

     For those who are stumbling here by accident, this is my writing blog where I talk about my writing, and other related things.  One thing I like to do is review movies, with my angle being explaining what I might have done differently.  As an imperfect person I admit the things I might do differently aren’t always the right choices, but to my personal opinion it is ways that might improve the movie.  I try to keep the first part of the review spoiler free, but once I start talking about what I would have changed out of necessity I have to discuss things that happened in the movie.

     Now going into this movie I was biased.  I had just finished listening to them on Audible, and had enjoyed the series immensely.  There is a great story that spans all three books, and it has great nuance and characters all through out.  Some of these characters are only in for one book.  Some go across all three.  But our focus here is on the movie.

     For the first two-thirds of this movie I was all in.  Visually the move is beautiful and the Characters all fit (mostly) with what I had expected from the book.  There were a couple of children’s powers that were swapped, and as it was shown in the trailer I will mention it here.  Emma instead of using fire, had her power changed to air, and Olive was given the fire power.  Normally a change like this would make me cry foul, but within the context of the movie it worked.  With a few changes like that, that in my opinion were in good taste, I was happy with what I was seeing.

     Then the last third of the movie happened.  I am guessing Tim Burton only wanted to do one move, because everything suddenly went on fast forward and an ending was stitched together that didn’t do the books justice.  I will say despite this derailment it has several moments where I still felt a surge of joy, and I now feel that Enoch may have been severely underutilized in the books.

     Overall the Acting was good.  Asa Butler was decent as Jacob.  Emma, was fine.  I could have used more Enoch and Millard, as they were awesome in the book.  Eva Green as Mrs. Peregrine was fantastic.  She managed to play the part with just a slight undertone of something sinister laying beneath the surface at times.  The villains of the story were very two-dimensional and flat.

      If you want to see this, I recommend the theater just for the visuals.  Tim Burton is still magic when it comes to just making every scene pop and look beautiful. Everything from the grey beaches to the green fields outside the home are wonderful.  There is a depth to the scenery that makes me want Tim Burton to direct a movie someday that is a hundred percent visual without any words.  I think he could do it.

     I give this movie a solid B if you have never read the books, and a C if you have.  The decision to cut this to one movie took out a lot of nuance and chance to explore characters down the line.  I won’t lie here; I think it is a horrible move to tie this up in a way that pretty much keeps the other books from happening.  I wish Tim Burton had stayed close to the original story, and left it open in case someone else wanted to pick it up.  This story does deserve a trilogy to be told properly.

    Past this point is where the spoilers are.   So, if you read past here and get spoilers it is your own fault.  I still try and keep them light, but you were warned.  Don’t whine to me.

     The big thing as I eluded to, is that I would have not changed the end on this story.  I would have stuck close to the original book and as any good story, it could have stood on its own. Even if we never received a sequel, the story could have held up.  That is without saying.

    I often complain about character bloat.  This movie had it.  Not a lot, but enough that we don’t get any personality out of some of the children except in a brief flash here and there.  The twins that weren’t at the house in the book could have been left out.  The rest could have used those few moments to be better developed.

    Now, one of the things they did right was give Enoch some screen time.  He is one of my favorite characters because he is a jerk.  He is a jerk who never becomes a villain despite the fact that is the path most authors take with a character like that.  I did not like the forced love story between him and Olive.  It was unnecessary and could have been removed.  It did not have enough time to be truly developed and at the end when it comes full circle it is more of a ‘meh moment than you being excited the two characters are together.  So cut it, or find a way to give it the depth it deserves.

     The villains are flat.  Samuel L. Jackson is wasted here.  They kept the base story behind the “whites” in place, but crapped on everything that made their story appealing.  Give me the story of Mrs. Peregrine’s brothers being a large part of the movement that created them.  Make me care.  Instead these villains feel very cartoon like and not very threatening at all.  They just are not good.  At all.  It would have been better focused on just one villain, and creating the framework to add more later.  If he had been used properly Samuel L. Jackson could have been menacing and great.  Alas, that is not what we get.

     I really don’t have more than that.  This movie mostly works, and works well.  Like I said most of the complaints I have come from the fact I read the book, and I think without that you can enjoy this movie.

     So tell me what you think, do you agree with me? Or am I off base here.  What would you have done differently if you were telling the story?

Ben Marble

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