Metacritic reviews

The latest in an impressive string of first-rate movies for kids.

All in all, James and the Giant Peach is an extraordinary achievement.

Imaginative, slightly creepy, but tremendously appealing to all ages. It's ripe to bursting with visual effects a heady combination of stop-motion and computer-generated imagery. And it has a delightful cast of personable bugs and larvae, all bound for New York City via floating fruit.

Despite a lightness of plot, it most beautifully captures the book's free-floating, fantastic sense of adventure and wonder.

The vocal cast are great fun, and the animation is smooth and vibrant. Except for a few treacly songs, this is great entertainment for all.

It will, I think, entertain kids for whom stop-motion animation is the last thing they're thinking about.

Obviously, the primary reason to see James and the Giant Peach is for its visual splendor.

If only they’d trusted it more, they might have made a marvelous kids’ film instead of a merely charming one.

A technological marvel, arch and innovative with a daringly offbeat visual conception. But it's also a strenuously artful film with a macabre edge that may scare small children. And beyond that, it lacks a clear idea of who its audience might be.

At least there’s plenty to look at among Selick’s beautifully detailed characters, who each have expressive bodies and their own ways of moving.