Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children must have been a fun movie to make.  The actors know how to play this material with a wink and a smile, letting the audience in on the joke.  Yes, it's a messy movie, and yes, it doesn't always make sense.  But I would be lying if I didn't say the movie didn't entertain me.  It's just so gloriously goofy, especially when Samuel L. Jackson shows up around the third act as the film's villain, wearing a fright wig and with bulging bug eyes.  He looks kind of like a Don King zombie, and throws out one liners as only Jackson can.

The movie is based on a series of Young Adult novels, and in a refreshing change of pace, it is not set in a dystopian future, and there is no evil regime trying to repress the youth.  But most refreshing of all, this movie marks somewhat of a return to form for director Tim Burton.  In recent years, the famously weird filmmaker has been making rather conventional films, such as the docudrama Big Eyes, or the epic fantasy Alice in Wonderland.  Here, there are moments that hint at his earlier, more daring work such as Beetlejuice.  There is a moment late in the film that is undeniably Burton, where an army of stop motion skeletons (done in a style that is an obvious nod to Ray Harryhausen's special effects work) do battle with massive CG monsters.  Yes, the entire sequence is overblown, but there is a sense of joy behind it.  It's not your standard soulless special effects climax, and there are little touches of humor thrown into the animation, such as the way the skeletons get their body parts knocked off, and they keep on finding awkward ways to continue the battle, despite their missing appendages. 

And yet, I already feel I may be in the minority when it comes to my support of the film.  I will admit up front, it is flawed.  It can be very exposition heavy, but then so are many films based on Young Adult book franchises, as the filmmakers have to cram an entire world the author created into a two hour running time.  It also frequently changes tone, from whimsy, to dark Gothic drama, and even a few elements of bizarre horror.  The story also seems to borrow different elements from mass media.  The titular Home for Peculiar Children, and its inhabitant kids who possess powers such as the ability to manipulate fire and be invisible at all times, is obviously inspired by the X-Men comics and films.  And the monsters that threaten the children late in the film look like they stepped out of a Resident Evil or Silent Hill video game.  But there is always some fun or unique angle that caught me by surprise that the movie throws in.  It's not enough to make the movie feel original, but it at least signals that the filmmakers were not entirely asleep at the wheel on this one, and threw in a couple sly moments.

I guess I should try to summarize the plot now, though I don't know how successful I will be.  Our hero is Jake (Asa Butterfield), a bored 16-year-old living in Florida.  Jake grew up listening to the stories his grandfather (Terence Stamp) used to tell, about a home and school for Peculiars (children gifted with unnatural paranormal abilities), and the headmistress Miss Peregrine who used to watch over them all.  When Jake's grandfather turns up dead after a violent break in and struggle in his house, his dying words lead Jake to Wales Island, where he accidentally stumbles upon a time loop, and learns that the Peculiars and Miss Peregrine herself (Eva Green) reside peacefully.  For Peregrine and her students, they are trapped eternally living one day in 1943 over and over.  It is the day before the building was bombed by German fighter planes.  As long as Peregrine uses her time magic to turn back time before the planes strike, the children will remain safe, and they will live eternal in the same 24 hours.  Jake can pass back and forth through his time, and the time the children are in, supposedly because he is a Peculiar as well, just as his grandfather was. 

The children who inhabit the home are simultaneously the most fascinating and frustrating part of the movie.  We want to know about them and their abilities, but save for a girl named Emma (Ella Purnell), who has the ability to float in the air and needs to wear lead shoes in order to keep herself on the ground, and whom Jake develops a romantic relationship with, we don't know much about them.  There's a boy who is invisible, a girl who can set things aflame just by touching them unless she is wearing special gloves, a boy who can reanimate the dead, and a girl with a second mouth on the back of her head, just to name a few.  The children largely act as a group, and we don't really get to see them use their abilities save for the climactic battle scene.  Should there be sequels (and the ending hints that there will be), I truly hope we get to spend more time with these children.  It is the job of Miss Peregrine to keep them safe in this time loop, so that they are not discovered by Baron (Samuel L. Jackson), a former Peculiar himself who was turned into a monster after an experiment went wrong, and he now hunts the children down so he can live immortal by feeding off of them, particularly their eyes.

By all accounts, Miss Peregrine's should not work, but it does, because it knows how to have fun with itself.  There's an off-kilter sense of humor to the screenplay, which is a good thing, because it would have been disastrous if it expected the audience to take this seriously.  No, it's not a great movie, but it is slickly made and a lot of fun.  Even when there are moments where it felt like the movie wasn't quite working, it still managed to keep me engaged.  It may be flawed, but it's not boring, and that's the key here.  There's a life to the cast and to Burton's directing that I think makes this work better than it has any right to.  Should the box office prove strong enough for a sequel, I hope they can bring back as much of the creative talent as they can, because I don't know if anyone else will be able to pull off the bizarre charms that this one has. 

Speaking of sequels, the movie is very smart in how it wraps things up enough, while still leaving possibilities for more adventures.  This is obviously a smarter choice than the standard cliffhanger that so many of these Young Adult adaptations go for.  I actually am rooting for this to become a film series.  I would love to see Burton go further with these characters, ideas and their world.  Yes, I spent most of my time watching this with a big, goofy grin on my face.  But, I was intrigued at the same time.

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