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    Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

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    adamwatchesmovies@

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    In recent years, the projects handed to Tim Burton may have felt right on paper but in execution didn’t suit his filmmaking style at all (looking at you, “Dumbo” and “Alice in Wonderland”). Despite these mistakes, we keep coming back. Why? Because when he’s the man for the job, there’s no one better - as “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” demonstrates. This quirky, slightly dark celebration of the weird suits him perfectly.

    Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield) travels to a reclusive island on the behest of his recently deceased grandfather. There, he finds a group of “Peculiars”, boys and girls with extraordinary powers, under the guard of Miss Peregrine (Eva Green). Isolated from civilization thanks to a time loop created in 1943, they hide from a world that wouldn’t understand them but mostly, they hide from ghoulish Peculiars named Hollows - eyeball-eating fiends.

    After “Harry Potter”, “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight” there was a deluge of Young Adult Novel fantasy/sci-fi adventures, most of which were non-starters. The genre began on a high note (you should see how bad the “Twilight” knockoffs got) and fell sharply afterwards. This film is one of the few exceptions. It begins with an original premise. There’s a lot of mythology to digest with time loops and different factions of people with superpowers - honestly, it gets a bit confusing towards the end - but on the surface, it’s nice and digestible. Children with strange abilities living under the protection of a teacher that must keep them hidden. A lonely teen who befriends them. Monsters determined to ruin everything. Got it? Now we can examine the characters residing at the school. They’re fun because their abilities are varied and unique. You won't find stand-ins of popular superheroes here. Everyone at the school has something to contribute when the action scenes call for them but you can also see why these children's bizarre skills force them to live in isolation.

    The story leans into the weirdness of Miss Peregrine’s home and then splits off into scenes that are either charming and wonderful or frightening and unsettling. The mix endears you to Jake and his new friends. It also makes the danger feel real. People getting their eyeballs eaten makes your skin crawl but it’s such a bizarrely gruesome fate it doesn’t feel like it would be too much for young (but not too young) audiences to handle. Such grisly choices make the story unpredictable. So much of this is so strange it wouldn't matter who it was happening to, you'd just want to see what was next. What are those twins hiding behind their mask? What’s it like living in a time loop? What’s the deal with the eyes, and with Jake’s grandfather? How can you combine all of the children’s mismatched abilities into a fighting force to repell the villains after them? The answers are wildly inventive.

    Much to my disappointment, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting a sequel to “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”. At least the picture makes the wise choice to end on a definitive note instead of teasing us something that’ll never come.

    I suspect “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” will be the kind of teen-oriented adventure some will absolutely fall in love with because of its quirks. It’s thrilling and a little bit loopy - and I mean that in a good way. (February 14, 2020)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  8.10.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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