Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN

Director : Tim Burton

Year : 2016

Genre : Fantasy

Rating : ***

Whether it be the disillusioned Pumpkin King of Halloween town, an orphaned billionaire who prevents crime while dressed as a bat or even the supposed worst filmmaker in Hollywood history, director Tim Burton has always been a champion of the misfit - and no characters are more misfitted and outside of the norm than those of his latest film 'Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children', a strange, bizarre, sometimes horrifying, yet surprisingly restrained adaptation of Ransom Riggs' beloved 2011 fantasy novel of the same name.

In a plot that all at once echoes the 'X-Men' franchise, 'Groundhog Day' and even Glen Morgan's 2006 eye-ripping remake of 'Black Christmas', 'Hugo's Asa Butterfield stars as Jake, a young and seemingly normal American teenager who after the mysterious and violent death of his grandfather (Terence Stamp), finds himself on the path of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, a secretive orphanage located somewhere on the beautiful yet rainy Welsh coast. Upon discovering the hallowed building, Jake meets the shape-shifting Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) who informs him that despite his apparent lack of any supernatural powers, he must be the one to protect the many young inhabitants of the orphanage from the frightening Hollows -  vicious creatures who retain their humanoid form by consuming the eyeballs of peculiars!

With its intricately beautiful Gothic designs, strange characters, macabre set pieces and a sometimes goofy sense of humour - bought mostly to the screen by a gleefully pantomimic Samuel L. Jackson who hams it up to the max as the sharp-talking and even sharper-toothed villain - 'Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children' is undoubtedly a Tim Burton picture and those who are familiar with his unique yet disparate back catalogue will recognise many of the themes, conventions and aesthetic idiosyncracies that have made him one of the most beloved and successful directors working in cinema today.

But as is also typical with a Burton film, the plot is inconsistent, the tone is muddled and at various points, the pacing falters. For its first 20 minutes, 'Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children' is a rather tiresome affair, due in most part to Asa Butterfield's frankly boring portrayal of Jake. The young actor has proved himself to be a performer of great talent in films such as the misguided yet well-meaning Holocaust drama 'The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas' and Martin Scorsese's aforementioned Oscar champion 'Hugo' but whether it is the fault of Jane Goldman's exposition-crammed script or Burton's behind the scenes direction, he really does come across here as a quite the amateur. The same could be said of supporting players such as Rupert Everett and even Dame Judi Dench who really cannot do much in the face of such of such lacklustre and inconsistent dialogue and timing.

However, once we arrive at the titular orphanage and the sultry Eva Green let's loose with her eccentric performance as its eponymous pipe-smoking protector, 'Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children' picks up both in excitement and interest. As is the case with any large ensemble, some characters are given more screen time than others and while the child actors who play the various 'peculiars' are all accomplished little stars in the making, strangely, it is the more unusual of them who are given a backseat to the action. You would think that boys who can shoot bees from their mouths or adorable pig-tailed girls who eat chicken with a monstrous mouth on the back of their heads would be catnip to the notoriously unusual Burton. However, it is the more 'mundane' of the children such as Ella Purnell's lighter-than-air Emma and the pyrokinetic Olive played by Lauren McCrostie who get most of the limelight and this one of the many examples of directorial reticence that prevents 'Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children' from being Tim Burton's long awaited return to form.

Visually it is stunning and in terms of eerie imagination it may be hard to top but for all of its cerlicued weirdness and macabre laughs, 'Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children' can't hold its own against when compared to the more superior works of Burton's filmography such as 'Ed Wood', 'Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street' and 'Beetlejuice' - films that embraced the dark and bizarre to fantastically strange and indelible effect. Even the lack of a quirky and distinctive score by regular collaborator Danny Elfman accentuates the restraint on show here and if there's one thing we shouldn't expect from Tim Burton, it is restraint. But while it may not be as funny, as dark or as peculiar as I as a die-hard Burton fan would have liked it to have been, 'Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children' is still a visual treat with more than enough strangeness and odd charm to entertain and maybe even scare youngsters and adults alike.