it didn't even eat them, it just stomped them to death which means the movie writers read that part of the book and said "yeah this is pretty fucking insane, but let's make it so that the rhino EATS THEM"
@@ripleyandweeds1288 It did eat them in the book. Probably was changed in reprints. I read the book way before the movie and I remember doing a triple take on the sentence to make sure I didn't misread it. Heck I even asked my parents for an explanation about it. XD
I think that James was too young to really remember what happened to his parents, so his aunts made up the rhino thing to scare him. Makes more sense than it actually happening, doesn't it?
Rhinos are herbivores they eat only plants - this is why I can never read this book I like Roald Dahl's work but this book irks me due to my zoo Biology degree
In the book, the Rhino escaped from a zoo in London and ran down James parents while they were out shopping. Oh and in the book, it's not a rhino that knocks the peach from the sky, it is a passenger jet.
FilmmakeroftheFuture “and I got the crown back! So yeah I’m a kid, and I’m also a goofball, and a wingnut, and a knucklehead mcflazzletron! But most of all....I’m...I’m..I’m... IM A GOOFY GOOBER!”
With the way James's aunts keep bringing up the rhino when they're bullying him into working, I figured they actually killed his parents themselves and have used the rhino story ever since as a way of controlling him with gullible childhood fear. But then the rhino may or may not have been real? Or a symbolic obstacle for James to overcome? Or something? I don't think even the movie knows.
I noticed that the fishes on a plate that the aunts eat were the same fishes on a plate produced by the mechanical shark. Which makes me think that if it turns out that the rhino was also a machine that was made by the aunts which was created to kill the parents so they could have James to work for them it would have been a really cool twist.
Or maybe it was an evil wizard (the dark lord Rhinomort!) who wanted to kill James because a prophecy designated the last one as the only one able to defeat him: James Trotter and the Philosopher's peach/Peach of secrets/Prisoners of Peachkaban/Peach of fire/Order of the peach/Half-house peach/Peachly hallows!
(i made something close for you and i tried to make it dumb and fantastic so if you think i spelled something wrong it's meant to be in there) rhinos: they scare little boys. assassinating parents, don't bring them much joy! the rhino, is no fun when it's killing you and everyone! HEY. that rhino made one little boy sad. and that's really really bad AND sad! Mr rhino please stop ripping out my lungs i can't sing my sungs! LA LA LA LA LA LA! rhinos, they come from a cloud! they are very very very big and loud, n' stuff. the rhino can't be nice....it's needs a bag of rice! YEAH!!!! LYRICS, RHINOS, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (he's so scary, you guys!) rhinos: they scare little boys, they eat your face off and lick your blood of clean like a cloth, i hope. one day. he will see the joy to will pay when one day happiness will come true COME ON GUYS SING A LONG! rhinos they scare little boys assassinating parents don't bring them much joy the rhino is no fun when it's killing everyone RHINOS RHINOS THEM MEAN MEAN RHINOS RHINOS them MEAN MEAN MEAN RHINOS RHINOS RHINOS MEEEEEEEAAAAN DOGS- *no wait*
"Why do the best parents always have evil siblings?" Well Timmy, all the goodness goes into the one child leaving not but evil for the second because there's only so much goodness in the womb and writers are lazy.
That's what happened to my baby sister. And I have a twin brother as well! I love them to death, but my brother is grumpy a lot, and my sister was a huge pain up until she reached 7.
I know this is probably just me way overthinking it. But I think the little "My name is James" song was maybe meant to show him trying to reclaim his personhood. Abuse is extremely dehumanizing, constantly being referred to as nothing and treated as such makes an individual feel as if they are really worthless and somehow not even truly a person. So, maybe it was meant to come across as James refusing to let himself be demoralized and choosing to hold on to who he is, "I'm not nothing, I'm James, I'm a person and I matter." sort of thing. Again, probably overthinking it.
+Mariah Osborne Actually, you might be right, abuse, especially child abuse can be dehumanizing so James is probably trying to tell himself that he matters.
Wow. That... That is actually really well thought out. If that was the intention of the film for that song, that makes things a little better, and it certainly brings the song into a more meaningful and less phoned-in light.
His aunts literally never call him by his name. And those were the only people he lived with. Hey didn't even let him play with other kids. The real silver lining is at the end of the movie when a resident child in New York asks for his name an he replies "my name is James" it's actually kinda touching.
"My name is James" song. When he refers to his name, he's referring to his identity. He's forgetting who he was as a person and losing his self-confidence. Who his parents raised him to be. But the lyrics are boring.
Yeah. A name is not merely a word. It stands for who you are. There's a similar degrading scene in Outcast of Redwall. A young badger, who was captured and enslaved by a weasel warlord, was called "Scumtripe" by said weasel. When he finally broke free, he didn't know his real name. So, with the help of a friend, he guessed and invented a new one: Sunflash, as he had a great yellow stripe down his face, and struck blows like bolt lightning.
Dmoe329 work work work work work work this is the entire song work work work work work work totally original work work work work work work Rihanna made this shit song? work work work work work work
@@julianfaranda Just the lyrics. there are a few others in there too, but that's the only one i remember. the aunts die early on in the book too - run over by the peach.
when I was little I thought the metal Rhino meant the parents died in a car crash and it was James way of coping with his fears...but...it turns out I looked too much into it
I always thought they got hit by a train, since the rhino was huge, metal and breathed smoke. I thought James called it a rhino because that's what it reminded him of.
@@melissacooper4282 Weird. I also have the book. 1988 Puffin Books edition, pdf form (I have to translate it into Polish for a college translation class). In that version it says on page 5 "Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.". I guess it depends on the edition.
Ok, so here are some explanations behind some of the confusing parts about this story. Roald Dahl was a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force and fought in World War II. When he settled down to become a writer a lot of his books contained metaphors for WWII, some of the stories entirely being about that time in English history. James and the Giant Peach was one of those stories, and like all of Roald Dahl's books, it was told from the perspective of a child and thus had a lot of imaginative explanations behind things that the child couldn't comprehend at the time. James lost his parents to a sudden event where a giant black rhino descended from the sky and destroyed them, resulting in him getting evacuated to the rural area of England where his aunts lived. That is a reference to the air raids, meaning his parents were likely killed by a bomb. Children living in populated areas of England were evacuated during the air raids to rural areas for their safety. He and his parents had aspirations to migrate to America because the war was not happening at the time over there (America only got involved at the last possible second of WWII). Now stuck with his abusive aunts, he wanted more than ever to migrate to America. He was given something he didn't understand by a man in military garb (it was most likely a ticket or a passport of some sorts) that guaranteed getting him to America. He then stowed away on a giant flying peach with 5 giant bugs. If you noticed, the bugs were either foreigners or elderly. Those were most of the people fleeing the country to America at the time. The peach was suspiciously similar in shape and function to a hot air balloon. It was likely a military zeppelin, which explains why it sailed in the water. Occasionally to save power (especially on long journeys) pilots would deactivate them on nights where the wind was favourable and let them sail in the water for a while. Enter the mechanical shark. One of the most popular German vessels in World War I and II was the Untersee, or submarine. After World War I, a rumour spread that if submarines were painted a certain way, they could avoid sonar (it was obviously not a true rumour and resulted in a lot of ridiculous looking submarines from that era). Some of these submarines were painted to look like sharks. There's actually an old relic of one of these in the harbour of my hometown! The shark that they encountered in the story was most likely a German submarine that attacked them because that's just what people tend to do in a war. I can't really explain the bit about diving into the Arctic Ocean, but I hope this little brief lesson in British history actually helped clear up a few things! :D Thankyou for reading
I don't really see foreigners on the "non-elderly" bugs (I mean, asides the ladybug and the nightbug, who clearly are based on elderly british ladies), I mean, accent-wise, I think the grasshopper's either italian or german, the earthworm's spanish, and the spider's obviously french, but what about the centipede?
Puecoman Well he's obviously meant to be a New Yorker. He possibly represents the pilot of the zeppelin, since he regularly boasts about having gone to many places around the world, and is, at least at first, the one navigating the journey.
Fun fact: the voice actor who played baby Bambi joined the U.S. Marine Corps, became the youngest drill instructor to dawn the campaign hat, served three tours Vietnam where he gained a reputation of fierceness, was promoted to Major, and earned the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts
Just checked it out ya he’s a maths teacher, that’s so cool sure the article was from 2017, but still neat sry for doubting your comment wish I had a actor be my math teacher, instead I got a Harry Potter fan still cool.
Can you imagine James' parents' funeral eulogy? "Thank you all for coming. But let's all be honest here; you aren't here to listen to me go on about how much we'll miss them. You're here because these two people were fucking EATEN ALIVE by a giant, flying Rhino made of an electrical storm. I honestly have to say that is a first for me. I'm not sure how common something like this occurs, but here we are. I mean seriously, what were the chances?! There's nothing like that in the bible, I've checked, so I'm going to have to wing it. So, uh...yeah this young couple was just minding their own business and were suddenly fucking eaten to death by a huge-ass storm rhino COMPLETELY out of nowhere and now their son is going to be raised by two piles of chicken excrement named Sponge and Spiker. And so, yeah, this was fucked up. Storm Rhinos exist, they can fly, and I am utterly scared shitless right now because of it. So thank you all for coming and may God not let you be eaten by the aforementioned big-as-Hell storm Rhino in the sky. Amen."
The parents death is even more rushed in the book. The movie turns the rhino into a metaphor, which is pretty interesting. In the book, a rhino runs out of the zoo and eats Jame's parents in the middle of the street. It's more like a comic and nonsense approach. So...the movie addapted it pretty well.
Gary Matrix Haha true. I read it last year, so I assumed it was a) a wrong concept of the time; b) just the author adding a little craziness in the story; c) both options haha.
I remember being a kid and not being able to follow anything in the movie because I was to busy trying to figure out how a rhino. ...a herbivore that lives several thousand miles away gobles up two adult humans in 35 seconds out of literally nowhere!
Well if Cows eat penguins than anything is possible Marine Biology, some weird video my friend found about penguins, we still wondered about it to this day
I thought the rhino was for james to cope with that a storm or a tornado killed his parents And his aunts reference the Rhino because it keeps him from running away and to be obedient subconsciously But that is just me But I just learned about the book and it makes more sense but it was not hard to imagine without the book
I can understand you thinking that if you saw the movie first, as it does suggest it. The book has no mention of a storm at all, and as you said does explain the rhino much better, so I always wondered why the storm was added to the movie. There was no purpose for it, and it was misleading.
*IT'S ALL IN JAMES' IMAGINATION* the Rhino is his way of coping with whatever killed his parents in front of him (most likely a storm or natural disaster considering how it appears), his aunts play on his explanation to torment him. He even admits in his confrontation with it - "You're not even a real rhino!". The shark resembles the old oven he has to clean, and it spits out the fish heads he is forced to eat. The bugs, including the spider he sees earlier in the movie, are the only living things he comes across that don't torment him, so he projects anthropomorphic qualities onto them so that he can pretend to have friends. They all want to go to New York because that was the holiday with his parents he never got to go on so he idealizes it as a place where wonderful things can happen. He imagines the giant peach because the idea of being free is almost as impossible as the old dead peach tree he sees every day finally producing fruit. The reason the aunts keep turning up, his dream, the figurehead on the underwater ship, and finally at New York is because they are his harsh reality threatening to shatter his escape into dreams. This is also why so many strange little flourishes in the story exist - like the objects floating around the peach during the "love" song. This is the story of an incredibly lonely boy using his powerful imagination to craft a better reality for himself - its very sad. BUT in the end he uses his imagination, this story "he dreamed up" to find some strength in himself and realize his self-worth: he has real dreams and ambitions and that's something to be proud of, the Rhino is just "smoke and noise" used to scare him, and its his aunts who are "nothing" - not him. This is of course in the context of the movie, not the book - I feel like this is the direction the director was going, not Road Dahl.
@@hayato3820 it’s actually not bad...i always find it interesting when people like the critic demand more films that delve into creativity and imagination, and when one like this does that as the OP points out, they slam it for those she qualities,
I was like 7 when I watched this for the first time, and I just lost my shit when I saw jack. "Hey u guys jack is having another identity crisis he thinks he's a pirate now"
He's written worse stories. His children's books include mutation and metamorphosis (The Witches, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and The Magic Finger), child abuse and abuse of power (Matilda), unhealthy eating habits and nightmares that come true (The BFG), etc. Also, do you realize the bugs terrify James in the book by talking about how they're starving from the minute he finds them? While staring at him so he thinks they're going to eat him?
Great Glass Elevator is hilarious. About 40% of the story focuses on the US government, as well as a fictional president. Roald was a British spy, so this little piece of comedy had obvious roots in that job.
Yeah, that was a really shitty book. While the original Chocolate Factory had a clear story and plot drive, Glass Elevator is aimless and goes off on tangents like a bad fanfiction, plus I felt that the characters were flanderized.
Also as for James singing that song "my name is James" I just saw it as a person responding to the mental and emotional abuse that they go through with someone who basically says "don't be your daydreaming lazy self and work, work, work, work". It is his way of reminding himself that he is a human being who is worthy of being themselves.
Is it just me but the scene where James is telling how he made it across the ocean in the peach, it reminds me of how spongebob talked about how he made it to shell city
I didn't much care for this movie when it first came out in theaters, but I do appreciate why others really like the movie. Let's take the really convenient clouds, followed by the extremely sudden, extremely unbelievable, and extremely unexplained explanation for James' parents' deaths. Taken in the context of the rest of the movie, there's clearly a purpose to this, and that purpose is to throw any adult viewer into the unconscious mindset of, "ok, this is an unreliable narrator, and an unreliable *lens.* We're supposed to read between the lines." This movie shows us the world as James - a child who's just lost his parents and has been sent to live with two abusive aunts - sees it... not as it actually is. Whether you see the entire "peach" storyline as literally happening in the story, or as James' escapist fantasy, is up to the viewer, but everything that comes before it... the aunts are definitely abusive (it takes a special kind of cruelty to learn that a child believes his parents were devoured by a rhino, and mock him for it instead of sitting him down and explaining the truth - whatever the truth may be), but they're probably not really that *cartoonishly* abusive - that's just how *James* sees them. And the camera shows us the world as James sees it. The songs are still... meh. Not quite as bad as NC is making them out to be (there's a real sadness to "my name is James. That's what mother called me. My name is James. So it's always been. Sometimes I forget..." - his aunts never call him by his name, so he has to remind himself what it is), but musically speaking, they're nothing special. And NC's point about the spider character is a good one. And I personally *like* suspending disbelief - to me, that's the entire joy of fiction - so a movie that's purposely telling you *not* to suspend disbelief isn't my cup of tea - but it's very artfully done, and I can see why others love the movie.
@@rainydaze4409 or the skeleton pirates ? You could argue I guess they are extensions of the rhinosarus and aunts but there's not really any link to them. In the book there are sharks but they are normal sharks. So it really feels like it's there just for an action sequence. No piarats at all in the book but there are "cloud men" who are kinda similar to the movie rhino. It dose seem like some of it is meant to be symbolism but the other half is pure cartoon nonsense.
I always see these comments like "oh i read this at the same time it happened woowowowow" and I'm always thinking *yeah bullshit* but....it just happened......to me...…..it makes it even more hilarious
I really loved this film as a kid, and I still really like it(but I agree it's kinda weird). I always believed that the rhino was metaphoric, or a way James imagination worked, builded up by his aunts abusive mocking. To me the rhino was actually a thunder storm/hurricane, wich was what killed their parents, and his childsh imagination turned it into a giant rhino...for some reason, maybe it was a copping mechanism, to give his fear a physical form, to me what he feared was actually thunder storms/hurricanes. Or maybe his aunts invented that story to abuse the boy's mind further and scare him. My brother actually always feared the rhino in this movie when he was a kid, even today he doesnt like the rhino scenes because it brings back bad memories. Btw, one my brother's biggest fears are thunder storms, so it makes sense.
James and The Giant Peach was one of the movies I loved to watch as a kid, in fact I rented it constantly at the video store whenever my parents and I went there. But now that I'm older, I can see it's flaws. It's definitely trying to tell a creative and imaginative story, but I feel like it loses its intention by rushing exposition and trying to turn it into a semi-musical.
SomethingAboutSean When I was young we got this movie on video, but the tape got messed up or lost or something, and I never got to watch it like a billion times, like I would have. Still, I have fond memories of it. I think it could have been better if they'd replaced some of the bland musical numbers with more character-building scenes, as the cast of bugs have pretty varied but ultimately limited personalities. The quiet scenes with the Spider and Grasshopper were probably among the best scenes simply because we got to know them.
It'd be a lot better if the imagery were representations of a real life sequence though a child's eye. Maybe the parents actually died in a car crash because they couldn't see in a storm and the clouds looked like a rhino. This would also explain why the shark is mechanical. Maybe it was cold and raining and that'd explain the sequence of having to fight pirates under cold water. It could actually be making sense if it tried hard enough.
I'm actually pretty sure it's a reference to World War II. Roald Dahl was a WWII veteran and referenced the war a lot in most of his books. A big black rhino that descended from the sky could very well represent a bomb. Most children in England were evacuated to rural areas (like Aunt Sponge & Spiker's house) so that would explain why James was not killed with them.
Apparently, the rhino was unsurprisingly an actual rhino escaped from the zoo in the book. Not sure why the movie made it a storm, though... Maybe that's how James's child mind nightmared it?
In the book, the peach falls because a plane flew past and the propellers cut the lines. And the aunts were flattened to death when the peach rolled them over in act 1.
Well I was shocked in the movie version when Aunts Sponge and Spiker suddenly appeared in New York looking like drowned rats. I was thinking "What are they doing there?! They are supposed to be dead!" Meaning that in the book the women were flattened by the giant peach. It even said that they looked like two flattened pancakes.
He also made the song "The Time of your Life" from A Bug's Life as well as "Strange Things" from Toy Story, both of which are legendary. So I'm really not sure where this take on Randy Newman came from. That was a BAD take.
About the rhino. At least in the book it had escaped from London Zoo. But a rhino appearing out of nowhere? I'm with the Nostalgia Critic with that! Also I'm surprised he didn't put in Manny's line from Ice Age in. "Wait a minute. I thought rhinos were vegetarians!" Thank you anyway Nostalgic Critic Guy! I love James and the giant peach and you are always a funny guy. From Virginia Clark. 🤣🍌🌸🦋🐦🍓🐮.
I always assumed the rhino in the film was a metaphor/a representation that james brain made up to cover for the truth This is all implicated during the final confrontation where james says the rhino isn’t even a real rhino and the bookworm tells him to do what his father said and look at it another way...which is why the rhino turns into a regular lighting storm before dissipating.
I had a very stupid theory that the rhino was only a curse,made by the aunts to to torment James,the reason is because of jealousy,they wanted a person to work for them and James was the one they wanted.
@@splatem546 I love your theory! I always wonder what it would be like if James managed to change the Rhino into a friend and use it agasint his Aunts. Also I'm sorry he lost his parents.
"My Name is James" is good because it portrays the simple yet heart felt coping mechanisms that James uses to survive living with his abusive aunts. Also I think things like the peach eating song or Tom Bombadil from LoTR are the types of things that a book can do but a movie can't. So I really think they actually shouldn't have put it in the movie, because that's the type of thing you leave out of movies and makes them boring. For a book though, it can be awesome, because books naturally have time for more story-telling details that add to the experience.
@@mrmeowsermoney Ok I'll give you that much. Still, Lot of people like the Nostalgia Critic thinks that Randy Newman songs don't have much flavor compared to say Alan Menken, David Zippel, or Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.
Isn't it odd how Rihanna's "Work" has the word "work" said 5 times at the first line of the chorus, just as many times those Aunt characters scream it?
This movie literally gave me a nightmare. It was weird too...They turned someones mum into chocolate them ate them, weird blood chocolate spilling out. They then asked if I wanted the same done to my mum. I was like 5 years old and I can just remember me saying "uhh...no?" LMAO.
I think the reason why James refers to himself as a third person in his opening song at the begining of the movie is because he's essentially rehumanizing himself. He is completly and utterly alone; both of the parents who named him and loved him are dead (the only thing left behind is his name), his aunts hate him, and dont even call him by his name (they dehumanize him by calling him a beast), and he has no friends or family other than two people who hate him. All he has is himself. So it feels lile he's repeating his own name to remind himself that he's still a person and that he was once loved and that life was happier once ( "My name is James. James...where are you? Isn't it a lovely day?").
"Look Simba. Everything the light touches, is our kingdom." "Wow..." "And then a rhino came and ate him up. *nom*" THE END "WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK!!!!"
15:18 I spat my drink out when this part came on. Ever since I saw this review, my girlfriend and I can't say the word "rhino" without saying "RHINOATH" lol Hilarious
so is a peach growing a thousand times it's size in less than a minute. So is said peach being lifted by only about a thousand seagulls. So is going to bed off the coast of Britain and waking up in Antarctica the next morning while under the power of said seagulls.
4:36 I wonder how the movie would have been if the line was instead of “an angry rhinoceros” It would have been “the devil in the form of a rhinoceros abducted his their parents” or something along the lines of that
fun fact, this was during the 50s or something, and the empire state building was built in the 1910s, and was the tallest building for over 40 years. DUHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! (no offense)
Julian Kritic well yeah it kinda does.. I mean a ton of movies leave plot holes and leave it to the audience to figure it out.. I think they are called Art Films...
123456789 987654321 oh thats kinda true, I wouldn't like inception nearly as much if it wasn't for the ending where they don't show the top stopping, so its up for the audiences interpretation, if it stopped it would have just been a cliche happy ending
@BullfrogWisdom well, the opening of this video should be evidence enough. The fact that he has to talk about and make up for ONE bad video is Insanity. And then the fans started demanding an amazing video to make up for it. Sounds pretty toxic to me
I think the rhino in the movie was meant to represent the explanation his aunts gave him instead of what REALLY happened... You see, the explanation was purposely rushed, and you never saw anything beyond the dark, stormy clouds. You see a vague shape of a rhino, but not much else. Considering James has an active imagination and the movie was smart enough to show him finding shapes in the clouds with his parents, it makes sense that he would see the shape of the rhino there. This is further supported later on, when James overcomes his fear of the rhino and reveals it for what it really was...just a bunch of noise. If the aunts are really that horrible, it's not too big of a leap to think they killed his parents to inherit their property, especially seeing as they don't really have any jobs and yet can still afford to eat and live in what had once been a pretty nice house. Images of the aunts can be seen in a few parts of the movie, so one could assume that they represent the fear of his aunts and the repressed memories of abuse "following" him throughout his adventure. In addition to this, the aunts put James through massive emotional and mental abuse and force him pretty much to do a slave's work...part of this, of course, is constantly referencing the rhino and how if he doesn't work hard enough, it will get him too...perhaps a subtle threat that they'll kill him, as well, if he doesn't do what they say? Finally, when James sings "my name is James", this seemingly innocent song echoes a pretty eerie concept...those who are abused and treated like a thing eventually break down and lose their sense of identity and personality, and in such an abusive household, it's pretty easy to see James eventually break down and lose the spirit he once had. As a side note, many of the songs that were made in the movie were actually in the original book and were mostly unchanged, so Randy Newman, surprisingly enough, wasn't guilty of making these kind of bland/pointless songs...think of them sort of like the oompa-loompa songs from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, meant to set up a tone/mood and show the budding camaraderie in the group...to be honest, my only gripe was that there wasn't any context shown before the songs were sung, unlike in the book. As far as the rest of it, I think it's just creative liberties...the sharks in the book (yes there was more than one) weren't mechanical, they were real...perhaps they used a mechanical shark and only one because they were limited on their budget and couldn't waste time on making realistic models of sharks to animate, so they resorted to one super-mega-shark. The dream James had actually had a purpose, however, as the shapes of his aunts, instead of the rhino, are shown in a pile of dark, looming clouds. This supports what I mentioned earlier about the aunts most likely being the ones who killed James' parents...perhaps his dream is his sub-conscious attempting to deal with memories or thoughts his mind blocked out in a way that wouldn't induce severe psychological trauma, similar to victims of abuse who suffer from PTSD. In my opinion, when looking at the film this way, it's sort of like a simpler, children's version of Fight Club...hidden messages and a hidden sub-plot that explains just what was really happening under the confusing and seemingly non-sequetor appearance. I personally give it a 7/10...a few annoying flaws were in the movie that should have been fixed before it was released, such as context for the songs some of the insects sing, and maybe some songs should have been removed and replaced with more quiet, somber scenes, but overall this movie is pretty good. I loved it as a kid, and the hidden meaning behind the film keeps me coming back.
Wafflefrogs101 Yes, that's in the book, but James in the movie never mentions anything about actually seeing it, only that his aunts told him it exists and killed his parents. The point I'm getting at is that the movie may have portrayed the rhino differently than in that book. In the book, the rhino is a metaphor for death. It could be literally a rhino, or it could be sickness...it's never described. However, if you think about it, the movie sort of makes the rhino seem much more fake than the book did, perhaps implying that it was a lie devised by his horrible aunts.
I identify as a rhino and when people generalise I get triggered, when kids dress up as rhinos I get triggered, when I see nature programmes I get triggered.
The Majestic Melon Rhino's have been known to kill people if step on to their territory but yeah the Rhino thing makes no sense in the book or movie. Though Roald Dahl was a dark author so that might explain things.
That's for you, maybe. Someone, including me, appreciates all three of them (Nightmare before Christmas, Coraline, James and the Giant Peach). + Corpse Bride. + Frankenweenie.
They really should have kept that part of the book in the movie. Really would have made much more sense than just a random rhino appearing out of the sky.
The thing I like about this movie is that it does capture my imagination. Also I like how despite how meta textual this entire video is, people are still upset that he criticized this movie.
honestly my favorite character in this movie is Ms. Spider. I don’t know why but I feel like she stands out the most in this movie. And honestly The subplot of the others being afraid of her would be great, which will give her character development to be more social.
In the book, it's explained that the Rhino escaped from the London Zoo and killed James' parents while out shopping, but still......WHAT???
I know, right? Why a rhino?!
No one but the late Roald Dahl knows.
it didn't even eat them, it just stomped them to death which means the movie writers read that part of the book and said "yeah this is pretty fucking insane, but let's make it so that the rhino EATS THEM"
Rhino's dont even eat meat they're herbivores lol it's so weird.
@@ripleyandweeds1288 It did eat them in the book. Probably was changed in reprints. I read the book way before the movie and I remember doing a triple take on the sentence to make sure I didn't misread it. Heck I even asked my parents for an explanation about it. XD
I died at "One day, a terrible thing happened. A angry rhino appeared out of nowhere and gobbled up his mother and father."
How was the funeral.
QWERT the funeral was shitty... literally
So did his parents
QWERT awkward
Mega Flygon! "And then a rhino ate him up!"
I think that James was too young to really remember what happened to his parents, so his aunts made up the rhino thing to scare him. Makes more sense than it actually happening, doesn't it?
Makes more sense then anything else in the godamn book or movie
Rhinos? pfft everyone know it was really a hippo! Hippos are satan's man soldiers
iluvyurbles really? is Gloria the only satan's woman soldier?
I meant the hippo from madagascar
Hey William bishop. it's William bishop.
"Wait, I thought rhinos were vegetarians."
-- Ice Age, 2002
"An excellent point."
“Shut Up”
@@anthonyoliva7191 "no you"
Rhinos are herbivores they eat only plants - this is why I can never read this book
I like Roald Dahl's work but this book irks me due to my zoo Biology degree
@DavidThe DrawBird8 "You know, I don't like animals that kill for pleasure!"
I only liked the movie for one reason.
1.) I like the fact that they were traveling in a peach. It just feels cozy.
I always thought that, too, but I like the whole movie. The cool stop motion style and effects are just... Well, cool.
in real life that would be sticky and juicy all over, but who cares
And that's a bad thing because? ;-)
i'd also go for a green apple, a lemon, and a watermelon
Joshua Osborne The book is better.
In the book, the Rhino escaped from a zoo in London and ran down James parents while they were out shopping.
Oh and in the book, it's not a rhino that knocks the peach from the sky, it is a passenger jet.
In other words...
Stick with the book
..
I am the resurrection and the life
I am the resurrection and the life
I am the resurrection and the life
well, giant flying peaches aside, that does make a little more sense......
welp... the script writers doing the adaptation got high again then.
well at least it's not videogame adaptation levels of wierd.
YES! Finally someone who read the book!
look at it this way, imagine if the writers of any JRPG got their hands on it............I imagine James kills God with the power of friendship.
"I flew the giant peach across the ocean, and I beat the Cyclops, and I rode the Hasselhoff!
I... I... I'm... I'MMA GOOFY GOOBER! ROCK!
“Hey look it’s the wizard that freed us”
WE’RE ALL GOOFY GOOBERS
FilmmakeroftheFuture “and I got the crown back! So yeah I’m a kid, and I’m also a goofball, and a wingnut, and a knucklehead mcflazzletron! But most of all....I’m...I’m..I’m...
IM A GOOFY GOOBER!”
Take it easyyyyy
WHAT THE SCALLOP!?
With the way James's aunts keep bringing up the rhino when they're bullying him into working, I figured they actually killed his parents themselves and have used the rhino story ever since as a way of controlling him with gullible childhood fear. But then the rhino may or may not have been real? Or a symbolic obstacle for James to overcome? Or something? I don't think even the movie knows.
I noticed that the fishes on a plate that the aunts eat were the same fishes on a plate produced by the mechanical shark. Which makes me think that if it turns out that the rhino was also a machine that was made by the aunts which was created to kill the parents so they could have James to work for them it would have been a really cool twist.
Or maybe it was an evil wizard (the dark lord Rhinomort!) who wanted to kill James because a prophecy designated the last one as the only one able to defeat him: James Trotter and the Philosopher's peach/Peach of secrets/Prisoners of Peachkaban/Peach of fire/Order of the peach/Half-house peach/Peachly hallows!
@@davideferrari1194 alright, Dave bugoti, you can stop mocking him now, I think its a good headcanon
I HATE HIS AUNTS!!!!
@@gionnijohnson69 Who doesn't hate his aunts?
I want a full version of "Rhinos; They scare little boys"
Jack SpinoRex only if you pay randy to write it
Is it it wrong I love even though how stupid it is?
Oh who am I kidding I LOVE stupid!!!
Me too
th-cam.com/video/CWI5bLLCxUw/w-d-xo.html here it is.
(i made something close for you and i tried to make it dumb and fantastic so if you think i spelled something wrong it's meant to be in there)
rhinos: they scare little boys. assassinating parents, don't bring them much joy! the rhino, is no fun when it's killing you and everyone! HEY. that rhino made one little boy sad. and that's really really bad AND sad! Mr rhino please stop ripping out my lungs i can't sing my sungs! LA LA LA LA LA LA! rhinos, they come from a cloud! they are very very very big and loud, n' stuff. the rhino can't be nice....it's needs a bag of rice! YEAH!!!! LYRICS, RHINOS, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (he's so scary, you guys!)
rhinos: they scare little boys, they eat your face off and lick your blood of clean like a cloth, i hope. one day. he will see the joy to will pay when one day happiness will come true
COME ON GUYS SING A LONG!
rhinos they scare little boys assassinating parents don't bring them much joy the rhino is no fun when it's killing everyone RHINOS RHINOS THEM MEAN MEAN RHINOS RHINOS them MEAN MEAN MEAN RHINOS RHINOS RHINOS MEEEEEEEAAAAN
DOGS-
*no wait*
"Why do the best parents always have evil siblings?"
Well Timmy, all the goodness goes into the one child leaving not but evil for the second because there's only so much goodness in the womb and writers are lazy.
That's what happened to my baby sister.
And I have a twin brother as well!
I love them to death, but my brother is grumpy a lot, and my sister was a huge pain up until she reached 7.
I don't hate my siblings. They can just be a pain at times.
*relatives
@@bryanegelhoffsanimationtec257 Loud House vibes
I know this is probably just me way overthinking it. But I think the little "My name is James" song was maybe meant to show him trying to reclaim his personhood. Abuse is extremely dehumanizing, constantly being referred to as nothing and treated as such makes an individual feel as if they are really worthless and somehow not even truly a person. So, maybe it was meant to come across as James refusing to let himself be demoralized and choosing to hold on to who he is, "I'm not nothing, I'm James, I'm a person and I matter." sort of thing. Again, probably overthinking it.
Yeah, I think that was the point. I liked the songs in this movie.
+Mariah Osborne Actually, you might be right, abuse, especially child abuse can be dehumanizing so James is probably trying to tell himself that he matters.
Wow. That... That is actually really well thought out. If that was the intention of the film for that song, that makes things a little better, and it certainly brings the song into a more meaningful and less phoned-in light.
His aunts literally never call him by his name. And those were the only people he lived with. Hey didn't even let him play with other kids. The real silver lining is at the end of the movie when a resident child in New York asks for his name an he replies "my name is James" it's actually kinda touching.
See, that's clever. But this film isn't. So really, it's a shame you weren't writing it.
5:35 Still a more graceful Mufasa death than what we got in the 2019 remake
XD
Patrick Preston 10000000000000000000000000000000000.1% better
LOL.
Little did we know, the elephant graveyard was actually just where the rhinos dumped their leftovers
Hey, it was literally exactly like the original.
"My name is James" song. When he refers to his name, he's referring to his identity. He's forgetting who he was as a person and losing his self-confidence. Who his parents raised him to be. But the lyrics are boring.
Especially after the aunts always refer to him as some kind of vermin. :(
Awesome
Yeah. A name is not merely a word. It stands for who you are.
There's a similar degrading scene in Outcast of Redwall. A young badger, who was captured and enslaved by a weasel warlord, was called "Scumtripe" by said weasel. When he finally broke free, he didn't know his real name. So, with the help of a friend, he guessed and invented a new one: Sunflash, as he had a great yellow stripe down his face, and struck blows like bolt lightning.
ai i thank you!!!! I’ve been thinking bout this!
His parents didn't raise him cause they were killed by a rhino when he was a kid
I think I found Rihanna's inspiration for her song "work"
SOMEONE MAKE THAT A REMIX, THIS NEEDS TO BE MADE
Dmoe329 Holy crap I was about to say that and then I scrolled down and you beat me to it. This is still better than drake
me too XD!
John Blowme. Have you listened to Anti?
Dmoe329 work work work work work work this is the entire song work work work work work work totally original work work work work work work Rihanna made this shit song? work work work work work work
Actually the song about eating the peach was written by Rhoal Dahl, not Randy Newman and was in the original book
The music too or just the lyrics
@@julianfaranda Just the lyrics. there are a few others in there too, but that's the only one i remember. the aunts die early on in the book too - run over by the peach.
DAHLMEN!!
Really?
Wonder what his opinion on Fantastic Mr Fox is
Nostalgia Critic: breathes
Guns: how many times do we have to tell you this old man
It do be like that sometimes
Really cringe to thank people for likes on TH-cam.
that's clearly supposed to represent the people who like the film for everything it shows being ultra defensive over it
when I was little I thought the metal Rhino meant the parents died in a car crash and it was James way of coping with his fears...but...it turns out I looked too much into it
Nagato Sora I thought that too!
Nagato Sora When was there a metal rhino
Kryptic Mortal the rhino obscured and blowing steam looks like a machine
I always thought they got hit by a train, since the rhino was huge, metal and breathed smoke. I thought James called it a rhino because that's what it reminded him of.
I always took it as they died in a hurricane or tornado or something.
“All of a sudden an angry Rhinoceros gobbled up his poor mother and father”. What?!
I know. In the book the rhinoceros doen't gobble up his parents. It simply says that the rhinoceros trampled them to death
Tuxedo Toad hey. In the 90s the world was a dangerous and different place
If I had a dollar for every time that's happened to me
@@melissacooper4282 Weird. I also have the book. 1988 Puffin Books edition, pdf form (I have to translate it into Polish for a college translation class). In that version it says on page 5 "Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.". I guess it depends on the edition.
I hate it when a dangerous herbivore suddenly gets a taste for human flesh.
Ok, so here are some explanations behind some of the confusing parts about this story.
Roald Dahl was a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force and fought in World War II. When he settled down to become a writer a lot of his books contained metaphors for WWII, some of the stories entirely being about that time in English history. James and the Giant Peach was one of those stories, and like all of Roald Dahl's books, it was told from the perspective of a child and thus had a lot of imaginative explanations behind things that the child couldn't comprehend at the time.
James lost his parents to a sudden event where a giant black rhino descended from the sky and destroyed them, resulting in him getting evacuated to the rural area of England where his aunts lived. That is a reference to the air raids, meaning his parents were likely killed by a bomb. Children living in populated areas of England were evacuated during the air raids to rural areas for their safety. He and his parents had aspirations to migrate to America because the war was not happening at the time over there (America only got involved at the last possible second of WWII).
Now stuck with his abusive aunts, he wanted more than ever to migrate to America. He was given something he didn't understand by a man in military garb (it was most likely a ticket or a passport of some sorts) that guaranteed getting him to America. He then stowed away on a giant flying peach with 5 giant bugs. If you noticed, the bugs were either foreigners or elderly. Those were most of the people fleeing the country to America at the time. The peach was suspiciously similar in shape and function to a hot air balloon. It was likely a military zeppelin, which explains why it sailed in the water. Occasionally to save power (especially on long journeys) pilots would deactivate them on nights where the wind was favourable and let them sail in the water for a while.
Enter the mechanical shark. One of the most popular German vessels in World War I and II was the Untersee, or submarine. After World War I, a rumour spread that if submarines were painted a certain way, they could avoid sonar (it was obviously not a true rumour and resulted in a lot of ridiculous looking submarines from that era). Some of these submarines were painted to look like sharks. There's actually an old relic of one of these in the harbour of my hometown! The shark that they encountered in the story was most likely a German submarine that attacked them because that's just what people tend to do in a war.
I can't really explain the bit about diving into the Arctic Ocean, but I hope this little brief lesson in British history actually helped clear up a few things! :D Thankyou for reading
That makes this movie infinitly better
Dunno if any of what you said is true, but I'll believe it. Thanks for taking the time to write this, loved this movie as a kid.
I don't really see foreigners on the "non-elderly" bugs (I mean, asides the ladybug and the nightbug, who clearly are based on elderly british ladies), I mean, accent-wise, I think the grasshopper's either italian or german, the earthworm's spanish, and the spider's obviously french, but what about the centipede?
Across the Key of Sea this definitely explains a lot, but they should have tied it back to reality to make more sense for the movie!
Puecoman Well he's obviously meant to be a New Yorker. He possibly represents the pilot of the zeppelin, since he regularly boasts about having gone to many places around the world, and is, at least at first, the one navigating the journey.
The kid who played James eventually went on to become a maths teacher at my secondary school.
Really? Do people ever bring it up?
Fun fact: the voice actor who played baby Bambi joined the U.S. Marine Corps, became the youngest drill instructor to dawn the campaign hat, served three tours Vietnam where he gained a reputation of fierceness, was promoted to Major, and earned the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts
@@slightlyistorical1776 and that with this voice, very empresiv
Just checked it out ya he’s a maths teacher, that’s so cool sure the article was from 2017, but still neat sry for doubting your comment wish I had a actor be my math teacher, instead I got a Harry Potter fan still cool.
He is?!
Can you imagine James' parents' funeral eulogy?
"Thank you all for coming. But let's all be honest here; you aren't here to listen to me go on about how much we'll miss them. You're here because these two people were fucking EATEN ALIVE by a giant, flying Rhino made of an electrical storm. I honestly have to say that is a first for me. I'm not sure how common something like this occurs, but here we are. I mean seriously, what were the chances?! There's nothing like that in the bible, I've checked, so I'm going to have to wing it. So, uh...yeah this young couple was just minding their own business and were suddenly fucking eaten to death by a huge-ass storm rhino COMPLETELY out of nowhere and now their son is going to be raised by two piles of chicken excrement named Sponge and Spiker. And so, yeah, this was fucked up. Storm Rhinos exist, they can fly, and I am utterly scared shitless right now because of it. So thank you all for coming and may God not let you be eaten by the aforementioned big-as-Hell storm Rhino in the sky. Amen."
Hilarious
Awesome Inspector
You deserve more likes 😂😂😂
I laughed too hard at this
Best eulogy ever!
Your comment for the win.
The parents death is even more rushed in the book. The movie turns the rhino into a metaphor, which is pretty interesting. In the book, a rhino runs out of the zoo and eats Jame's parents in the middle of the street. It's more like a comic and nonsense approach. So...the movie addapted it pretty well.
The book even lampshades the oddity of the whole thing: "In full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street".
Impatiens the Sorry Shmuck Hahaha true! I like both the movie and the book, but they go on different directions.
Gary Matrix Haha true. I read it last year, so I assumed it was a) a wrong concept of the time; b) just the author adding a little craziness in the story; c) both options haha.
Ah, so a metaphor ate James’ parents? That make more sense.
Ana Luiza Figueiredo
... a metaphor for what? Like. Hating clouds?
As an arachnophobe, I don’t know how I would feel about a human sized French female spider telling me dinner is ready.
Always kinda turned me on.
I like spiders and even I'd find that creepy.
I mean spiders are pretty creepy, especially when they get the jump on you. But I don't think I have arachnophobia, so I'm totally down
Isn't she Japanese?
+@@strawberrysoulforever8336 Nah, fam. Listen to her accent. Definitely French
"I thought rhinos were vegetarian"
-Ray Romano aka Manny the mammoth
Sid:" An excellent point"
@@oscarramirez2697
Manny: "Shut up!"
Rhino: Save it, for a mammal that cares.
@@Gr8p3 Sid: I'm a mammal that cares
"if I had a trunk that small I wouldn't try to bring attention to myself" - Manny the mammoth
I remember being a kid and not being able to follow anything in the movie because I was to busy trying to figure out how a rhino. ...a herbivore that lives several thousand miles away gobles up two adult humans in 35 seconds out of literally nowhere!
Maybe it's actually some kind of evil cloud god.
In the book it escaped from the zoo while the parents are Christmas shopping and it trampled them instead of eating them
His parents died of pneumonia, one of the main causes of which is the *rhino* virus
I assumed it was a really bad storm (that's why he sees the Rhino in the clouds) and they died but the aunts told him it was a Rhino
James: the boi who lived
Mufasa: Look, Simba. Everything the light touches is our kingdom.
*Mufasa gets eaten by a Rhino*
Roll credits
Rhinos are vegans
Rhinos, they scare little boys.
Well if Cows eat penguins than anything is possible
Marine Biology, some weird video my friend found about penguins, we still wondered about it to this day
A Guy name Lex lol
A Guy name Lex also thats weird 😮
I thought the rhino was for james to cope with that a storm or a tornado killed his parents
And his aunts reference the Rhino because it keeps him from running away and to be obedient subconsciously
But that is just me
But I just learned about the book and it makes more sense but it was not hard to imagine without the book
Maybe a rhino represents a rhinovirus. Like they got sick and died.
I can understand you thinking that if you saw the movie first, as it does suggest it. The book has no mention of a storm at all, and as you said does explain the rhino much better, so I always wondered why the storm was added to the movie. There was no purpose for it, and it was misleading.
I dont get it
Yeah they treated him like a slave
@@DeSoulTV But a cold is easy to cure.
"Rhinos" By Randy Newman
Rhinoth
They thcare little boyth
Athathanating parenth!
They don't bring 'em much joy!
Ith Randy!
15:19
Such cinematic brilliance bravo bravo
*NEWMAN!*
He doesn't even sound like that. LOL
I laughed so hard
"My name is James
That's what my mother called me"
No shit
Human maybe his dad called him that or his granny. How ever could we have gone on not knowing that.
Toad Lash Oh ok XD
"Can you imagine if one of the Disney movies did that?" This is a Disney movie
Aidan Barnes It was a Disney movie?
That’s explains the singing
I'm pretty sure that was a joke.
But it isn’t a classic animated film...
Eh... kind of. The production company was disney if I remember right but it was not filmed/animated by the disney studio.
Man this guy loves tearing apart my childhood
but I still come back for more XD
*HE'S CALLED. THE NOSTALGIA. CRITIC. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT!?*
*IT'S ALL IN JAMES' IMAGINATION*
the Rhino is his way of coping with whatever killed his parents in front of him (most likely a storm or natural disaster considering how it appears), his aunts play on his explanation to torment him. He even admits in his confrontation with it - "You're not even a real rhino!". The shark resembles the old oven he has to clean, and it spits out the fish heads he is forced to eat. The bugs, including the spider he sees earlier in the movie, are the only living things he comes across that don't torment him, so he projects anthropomorphic qualities onto them so that he can pretend to have friends. They all want to go to New York because that was the holiday with his parents he never got to go on so he idealizes it as a place where wonderful things can happen. He imagines the giant peach because the idea of being free is almost as impossible as the old dead peach tree he sees every day finally producing fruit. The reason the aunts keep turning up, his dream, the figurehead on the underwater ship, and finally at New York is because they are his harsh reality threatening to shatter his escape into dreams. This is also why so many strange little flourishes in the story exist - like the objects floating around the peach during the "love" song.
This is the story of an incredibly lonely boy using his powerful imagination to craft a better reality for himself - its very sad.
BUT in the end he uses his imagination, this story "he dreamed up" to find some strength in himself and realize his self-worth: he has real dreams and ambitions and that's something to be proud of, the Rhino is just "smoke and noise" used to scare him, and its his aunts who are "nothing" - not him.
This is of course in the context of the movie, not the book - I feel like this is the direction the director was going, not Road Dahl.
**claps**
My Dude. You are my fcking savior.
the movie is still shit, though
The people who made this film probably aren’t smart enough to make that symbolism
@@hayato3820 it’s actually not bad...i always find it interesting when people like the critic demand more films that delve into creativity and imagination, and when one like this does that as the OP points out, they slam it for those she qualities,
@@Poppy_and_ponies except they did make the symbolism since all those scenes as he points out are in the film...
Those aunts were ancestors of Rihanna! "WORK WORK WORK WORK!"
Exactly😂
Isn't that Iggy Zanalea?
+Chiki Lezhava em nope
That's probably the most braindead song I've ever heard.
I always thought she was inspired by the Covenant Elite's from Halo 1 "WORG WORG WORG WORG"
I was like 7 when I watched this for the first time, and I just lost my shit when I saw jack. "Hey u guys jack is having another identity crisis he thinks he's a pirate now"
I'm pretty sure Roald Dahl was just batshit crazy. I mean, just go and read the plot summary on Wikipedia of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
Ryan's Rants did and done
He's written worse stories. His children's books include mutation and metamorphosis (The Witches, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and The Magic Finger), child abuse and abuse of power (Matilda), unhealthy eating habits and nightmares that come true (The BFG), etc. Also, do you realize the bugs terrify James in the book by talking about how they're starving from the minute he finds them? While staring at him so he thinks they're going to eat him?
He was also an ass
Great Glass Elevator is hilarious. About 40% of the story focuses on the US government, as well as a fictional president. Roald was a British spy, so this little piece of comedy had obvious roots in that job.
Yeah, that was a really shitty book. While the original Chocolate Factory had a clear story and plot drive, Glass Elevator is aimless and goes off on tangents like a bad fanfiction, plus I felt that the characters were flanderized.
In the book it explains what happened to James’s parents better
From what i remember they get trampled to death by an actual rhino, right?
In fact it doesn't really matter
@@oscarramirez2697 little tip when you go shopping while a rhino is there..try not to get stomped on..
What really happened to his parents?!? I need to know now!!?!!
The critic obviously hasn’t read the book !
Also as for James singing that song "my name is James" I just saw it as a person responding to the mental and emotional abuse that they go through with someone who basically says "don't be your daydreaming lazy self and work, work, work, work". It is his way of reminding himself that he is a human being who is worthy of being themselves.
Is it just me but the scene where James is telling how he made it across the ocean in the peach, it reminds me of how spongebob talked about how he made it to shell city
Jordan Reviews he's a goofy goober yeah
Lol
Jordan Reviews same
So the peach is Hasselhoff’s testicle
Why boy
Wow, we need to surround you with insane amounts of military-grade firearms more often if you get *this* positive!
Indeed. I'll send in reinforcements soon.
I got no less then 5 misils, 7 tanks and 6 other wepons to help him to stay "wilingli" nice!
Nice spelling what are you 7?
Let’s grab some guns...and ships...
Almost 14, #NORWAY
20:04 and then Spider-man shows up and says "HEY, THAT'S MY SHTICK!"
I didn't much care for this movie when it first came out in theaters, but I do appreciate why others really like the movie.
Let's take the really convenient clouds, followed by the extremely sudden, extremely unbelievable, and extremely unexplained explanation for James' parents' deaths. Taken in the context of the rest of the movie, there's clearly a purpose to this, and that purpose is to throw any adult viewer into the unconscious mindset of, "ok, this is an unreliable narrator, and an unreliable *lens.* We're supposed to read between the lines."
This movie shows us the world as James - a child who's just lost his parents and has been sent to live with two abusive aunts - sees it... not as it actually is. Whether you see the entire "peach" storyline as literally happening in the story, or as James' escapist fantasy, is up to the viewer, but everything that comes before it... the aunts are definitely abusive (it takes a special kind of cruelty to learn that a child believes his parents were devoured by a rhino, and mock him for it instead of sitting him down and explaining the truth - whatever the truth may be), but they're probably not really that *cartoonishly* abusive - that's just how *James* sees them. And the camera shows us the world as James sees it.
The songs are still... meh. Not quite as bad as NC is making them out to be (there's a real sadness to "my name is James. That's what mother called me. My name is James. So it's always been. Sometimes I forget..." - his aunts never call him by his name, so he has to remind himself what it is), but musically speaking, they're nothing special. And NC's point about the spider character is a good one. And I personally *like* suspending disbelief - to me, that's the entire joy of fiction - so a movie that's purposely telling you *not* to suspend disbelief isn't my cup of tea - but it's very artfully done, and I can see why others love the movie.
What does the mechanical shark represent? I'm with you on all of this, but if all of that has an explanation, what is the explanation for the shark?
@@rainydaze4409 or the skeleton pirates ? You could argue I guess they are extensions of the rhinosarus and aunts but there's not really any link to them. In the book there are sharks but they are normal sharks. So it really feels like it's there just for an action sequence. No piarats at all in the book but there are "cloud men" who are kinda similar to the movie rhino.
It dose seem like some of it is meant to be symbolism but the other half is pure cartoon nonsense.
'kryptonite pasta' i'm dead
R.I.P Pik Hik, you will be missed.
Give me a good send off bro
I always see these comments like "oh i read this at the same time it happened woowowowow" and I'm always thinking *yeah bullshit* but....it just happened......to me...…..it makes it even more hilarious
Pik Hik same
My name is James. That's what mother called me
My name is James, so it's always been
My names JAMES!
James Buschell "My name is Jeff."
James Buschell Best lyric ever.
Thomas Alvarez but isn't it Thomas?
I really loved this film as a kid, and I still really like it(but I agree it's kinda weird). I always believed that the rhino was metaphoric, or a way James imagination worked, builded up by his aunts abusive mocking. To me the rhino was actually a thunder storm/hurricane, wich was what killed their parents, and his childsh imagination turned it into a giant rhino...for some reason, maybe it was a copping mechanism, to give his fear a physical form, to me what he feared was actually thunder storms/hurricanes. Or maybe his aunts invented that story to abuse the boy's mind further and scare him.
My brother actually always feared the rhino in this movie when he was a kid, even today he doesnt like the rhino scenes because it brings back bad memories. Btw, one my brother's biggest fears are thunder storms, so it makes sense.
Whats your problem? It makes sense.
It is written in the book that it was a rhinoceros that had escaped from the zoo.....
@@MabuseXX Yeah, but it was not in the movie. Movies sometimes are diferent from the book.
Remember Critic, you can't express your opinion on the internet!
oh no! you have a different opinion than me! someone call the internet police!
+vodahmiin nonamehere Lock The Critic UP!!! NO PAROLE!!!!
In fear of my life I'm going to agree with you!
Oh, how far Humanity has fallen.
Mikey Eaton it fell once youtube comments were a thing
James and The Giant Peach was one of the movies I loved to watch as a kid, in fact I rented it constantly at the video store whenever my parents and I went there. But now that I'm older, I can see it's flaws. It's definitely trying to tell a creative and imaginative story, but I feel like it loses its intention by rushing exposition and trying to turn it into a semi-musical.
SomethingAboutSean I find it amazing how you switched your it's and its there, almost as if you tried.
SomethingAboutSean When I was young we got this movie on video, but the tape got messed up or lost or something, and I never got to watch it like a billion times, like I would have. Still, I have fond memories of it. I think it could have been better if they'd replaced some of the bland musical numbers with more character-building scenes, as the cast of bugs have pretty varied but ultimately limited personalities. The quiet scenes with the Spider and Grasshopper were probably among the best scenes simply because we got to know them.
It'd be a lot better if the imagery were representations of a real life sequence though a child's eye. Maybe the parents actually died in a car crash because they couldn't see in a storm and the clouds looked like a rhino. This would also explain why the shark is mechanical. Maybe it was cold and raining and that'd explain the sequence of having to fight pirates under cold water. It could actually be making sense if it tried hard enough.
Paradox The Pro That doesn't explain why it was firing fish heads, though.
+The Art of Ａｇｏｒａｐｈｏｂｉａ I think that the Rhino supposed to represent a larger truck that rammed into James's parents car
I'm actually pretty sure it's a reference to World War II. Roald Dahl was a WWII veteran and referenced the war a lot in most of his books. A big black rhino that descended from the sky could very well represent a bomb. Most children in England were evacuated to rural areas (like Aunt Sponge & Spiker's house) so that would explain why James was not killed with them.
Paradox The Pro Butts make poo he says , BURTS DON'T MAKE POO , STOMACHS MAKE POO
DANG AUTO CORRECT
*DAMN
Jack: Now, tell me all you know about...Christmas Land
I died
Damn it, a giant Rhinoceros ate my parents again!
THAT'S THE THIRD PAIR THIS WEEK!
TheSpycicleGamer I'm actually really happy, cause the rhino ate my rude, snobby, happen to be relatives of really nice parents this week!
Cut to James wrapping his aunts in leaves and foliage to try and attract the rhino
Apparently, the rhino was unsurprisingly an actual rhino escaped from the zoo in the book. Not sure why the movie made it a storm, though... Maybe that's how James's child mind nightmared it?
In the book, the peach falls because a plane flew past and the propellers cut the lines.
And the aunts were flattened to death when the peach rolled them over in act 1.
Well I was shocked in the movie version when Aunts Sponge and Spiker suddenly appeared in New York looking like drowned rats. I was thinking "What are they doing there?! They are supposed to be dead!" Meaning that in the book the women were flattened by the giant peach. It even said that they looked like two flattened pancakes.
Didn't Randy Newman write " You've got a Friend in me" from Toy story, that was a pretty good song
He also won Oscars for his work on the soundtracks for Monsters Inc. and Toy Story 3.
He also made the song "The Time of your Life" from A Bug's Life as well as "Strange Things" from Toy Story, both of which are legendary. So I'm really not sure where this take on Randy Newman came from. That was a BAD take.
18:20 NOOoooooooo.... **squish** RHINOS, THEY SCARE LITTLE BOYS
"Ugh It's like someone put make-up on the crypt keeper" LOL!! xD
“Really? We’re singing a song about eating the goddamn peach?”
Yes we are, because this song was from the book.
That scream at the end was gold
About the rhino. At least in the book it had escaped from London Zoo. But a rhino appearing out of nowhere? I'm with the Nostalgia Critic with that! Also I'm surprised he didn't put in Manny's line from Ice Age in. "Wait a minute. I thought rhinos were vegetarians!" Thank you anyway Nostalgic Critic Guy! I love James and the giant peach and you are always a funny guy. From Virginia Clark. 🤣🍌🌸🦋🐦🍓🐮.
I always assumed the rhino in the film was a metaphor/a representation that james brain made up to cover for the truth
This is all implicated during the final confrontation where james says the rhino isn’t even a real rhino
and the bookworm tells him to do what his father said and look at it another way...which is why the rhino turns into a regular lighting storm before dissipating.
I had a very stupid theory that the rhino was only a curse,made by the aunts to to torment James,the reason is because of jealousy,they wanted a person to work for them and James was the one they wanted.
@@splatem546 I love your theory! I always wonder what it would be like if James managed to change the Rhino into a friend and use it agasint his Aunts. Also I'm sorry he lost his parents.
@@17moonbeams Perhaps someday,...
someday...
First I thought the Rino was a metaphor but later it's it's literal
Er... Critic. I get your point about 'My Name is James' but the song about eating the peach was literally in the book.
ScallywagJac id say he’d read it, as any kid in the 80s did in school..
Really?
ScallywagJac he’s reviewing the movie, not the book.
"My Name is James" is good because it portrays the simple yet heart felt coping mechanisms that James uses to survive living with his abusive aunts. Also I think things like the peach eating song or Tom Bombadil from LoTR are the types of things that a book can do but a movie can't. So I really think they actually shouldn't have put it in the movie, because that's the type of thing you leave out of movies and makes them boring. For a book though, it can be awesome, because books naturally have time for more story-telling details that add to the experience.
Well maybe it was dumb in the book too
Well...
Newman DID write “You got a friend in me”, so...
Mar1o 640 There has to be at least one daisy in a field of weeds, right?
@@dailygeek1334 he wrote a LOT of good songs
@@mrmeowsermoney Really, did he Really?????
@@orangeslash1667 when she loved me, friends on the other side, strange things, etc
He was good with Disney, anyway
@@mrmeowsermoney Ok I'll give you that much. Still, Lot of people like the Nostalgia Critic thinks that Randy Newman songs don't have much flavor compared to say Alan Menken, David Zippel, or Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.
I said 'What?' right before he lifted the paper I'm dying 😂😂
5:31
Actually Critic this IS a Disney Movie
eleking gudon I
I forget that a lot
that is weird because I remember saw the movie on CN
(Sorry if I wrote something wrong but I am not very good on english)
Isn't it odd how Rihanna's "Work" has the word "work" said 5 times at the first line of the chorus, just as many times those Aunt characters scream it?
That's so weird!
Doug A someone make a remix of that right now
Doug A Rhianna said work 6 times
And Tetris Blast, along with that gorram ad for it. Yes, cockroach. It's supposed to be a GAAAAME.
When they said work my mind immediately went to the work song lol
This movie literally gave me a nightmare.
It was weird too...They turned someones mum into chocolate them ate them, weird blood chocolate spilling out. They then asked if I wanted the same done to my mum. I was like 5 years old and I can just remember me saying "uhh...no?" LMAO.
I’ve Watched This Movie A Lot Of Times And I Definitely Don’t Remember That Being In The Movie.
@@LeagueOfVillains32 he said it was his nightmare about it
I got confused reading it too, don't worry
I think the reason why James refers to himself as a third person in his opening song at the begining of the movie is because he's essentially rehumanizing himself. He is completly and utterly alone; both of the parents who named him and loved him are dead (the only thing left behind is his name), his aunts hate him, and dont even call him by his name (they dehumanize him by calling him a beast), and he has no friends or family other than two people who hate him. All he has is himself. So it feels lile he's repeating his own name to remind himself that he's still a person and that he was once loved and that life was happier once ( "My name is James. James...where are you? Isn't it a lovely day?").
"Look Simba. Everything the light touches, is our kingdom."
"Wow..."
"And then a rhino came and ate him up. *nom*"
THE END
"WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK!!!!"
Why is every freaking comment on this video about the dang rhino??
Howdy Folks! Gaming *shrugs*
Because it's in the room, and SOMEONE has to talk about it!
I read that as DRAG think heheh
Dost thou anus bleed of irony?
16:08 killed me holy shit'
that movie clip of Jack saying "Since I am dead, I can take off my head" playing with that scene was perfect.
15:18
I spat my drink out when this part came on.
Ever since I saw this review, my girlfriend and I can't say the word "rhino" without saying "RHINOATH"
lol
Hilarious
This review is just so wonderfully passive aggressive and sarcastic.
That house at the ending is pretty physically impossible.
so is a peach growing a thousand times it's size in less than a minute.
So is said peach being lifted by only about a thousand seagulls.
So is going to bed off the coast of Britain and waking up in Antarctica the next morning while under the power of said seagulls.
So are giant talking insects Alex.
4:36 I wonder how the movie would have been if the line was instead of “an angry rhinoceros”
It would have been “the devil in the form of a rhinoceros abducted his their parents” or something along the lines of that
15:57 Douchie: you mean Christmas Town, Captain Jack Skellington!
Ah, yes... I remember a time when a cloud-rhino teleports out of nowhere and killed my parents while leaving me at a beach.
Basic 90's stuff.
Pretty much
It's like the fucking circle of life. The same happened to me yesterday
Dawson Brannan
That happened to me 3 times last week
A rhino killed my fiancee. Best.Rhino.Ever
Dawson Brannan it happens to me all the time
"I landed on the tallest building in the world!"
*New York isn't located in Asia*
It was the tallest building in the world when Dahl wrote the book...and i think when the movie was made too
No, when the movie came out the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world, not the Empire State Building.
The movie is set in the 1920s which at the time the empire state building was the building in the world
Empire State Building Was The tallest building from 1931. The tallest building in the 1920's was Woolworth building.
fun fact, this was during the 50s or something, and the empire state building was built in the 1910s, and was the tallest building for over 40 years. DUHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! (no offense)
The rhinoceros was in the book. It's a children's book. It's fantasy. Also, it's Roald Dahl - he didn't pander to his readers.
At least it was an actual rhino and not some clouds
My teacher read this book to my 2nd grade class. I loved it, loved the movie and up until this point I always assumed RD was a female. I'm 31...
I remember reading this book in my fifth grade reading class. Then many years later I re-read it.
I grew up watching this movie as a kid, this was litterly my favorite film don't care if some people dislike It, I personally enjoyed It.
This movie is just as weird as I remember
The only part I ever watched from this film was when they found the pirate ship with Jack . Best part 10/10
♪My naaaaaame is♪
chika-chika Slim Shady!
Person 1: He says he didn't like the movie
Person 2: Kill em
Nostalgia Critic: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Man that was funny. That scream.
were the aunts just following him until the peach landed? how did they get there so fast?
They drove after him across the ocean floor. And to their credit, that's a pretty amazing accomplishment.
especially in the arctic. they must have been freezing *gasp* they're disguising themselves as the ship ladies to follow him!
No, that was just an ordinary ship mast that coincidentally looked like the aunts.
It's been a long time since I've seen the whole movie, but I seem to remember the mecha-shark being piloted by the aunts. Maybe I'm just trippin'.
Lizzie Sloan pretty sure a giant peach on top of the Eiffel Tower would get their attention
Do the Matilda review
that would be great.
This movie is OK, but you have to acknowledge it's flaws without getting triggered.
DNAiden the person I feel like Doug has a lack of understanding when it comes to surrealism. Not everything has to be explained.
DNAiden the person damn straight homie.
I agree with AAproductions to an extent (Stephen King had a quote about explanations being the antithesis of fear.), but DNAiden is also right.
"Mapquest can suck it" LMFAO!!! They sure can, cloud. They sure can. XD
Lol I get better bus directions from freaking Google maps
this movie could be a metaphor for almost anything
***** Does that make an excuse for the laziness and plot holes?
Julian Kritic no, not at all
***** OK then. Juuuust checking
Julian Kritic well yeah it kinda does.. I mean a ton of movies leave plot holes and leave it to the audience to figure it out.. I think they are called Art Films...
123456789 987654321 oh thats kinda true, I wouldn't like inception nearly as much if it wasn't for the ending where they don't show the top stopping, so its up for the audiences interpretation, if it stopped it would have just been a cliche happy ending
lost my shit at "garfields anus"
I lost my shit at "Seiko Shinohara".
I lost my shit when someone stole it.
Perkybawlz
Hallo, Seiko. How's School-Hell working out for you?
That shark scares the everliving shit out of me
I feel so bad for nostalgia critic, this man has to deal with one of the most toxic fanbase's I've ever seen. Hats off to you man, God bless you.
@BullfrogWisdom well, the opening of this video should be evidence enough. The fact that he has to talk about and make up for ONE bad video is Insanity. And then the fans started demanding an amazing video to make up for it. Sounds pretty toxic to me
@@The_Fabulous_Mochi you have another subscriber
@@alextelson4416 thanks man ☺️
I think the rhino in the movie was meant to represent the explanation his aunts gave him instead of what REALLY happened...
You see, the explanation was purposely rushed, and you never saw anything beyond the dark, stormy clouds. You see a vague shape of a rhino, but not much else. Considering James has an active imagination and the movie was smart enough to show him finding shapes in the clouds with his parents, it makes sense that he would see the shape of the rhino there. This is further supported later on, when James overcomes his fear of the rhino and reveals it for what it really was...just a bunch of noise.
If the aunts are really that horrible, it's not too big of a leap to think they killed his parents to inherit their property, especially seeing as they don't really have any jobs and yet can still afford to eat and live in what had once been a pretty nice house.
Images of the aunts can be seen in a few parts of the movie, so one could assume that they represent the fear of his aunts and the repressed memories of abuse "following" him throughout his adventure.
In addition to this, the aunts put James through massive emotional and mental abuse and force him pretty much to do a slave's work...part of this, of course, is constantly referencing the rhino and how if he doesn't work hard enough, it will get him too...perhaps a subtle threat that they'll kill him, as well, if he doesn't do what they say?
Finally, when James sings "my name is James", this seemingly innocent song echoes a pretty eerie concept...those who are abused and treated like a thing eventually break down and lose their sense of identity and personality, and in such an abusive household, it's pretty easy to see James eventually break down and lose the spirit he once had.
As a side note, many of the songs that were made in the movie were actually in the original book and were mostly unchanged, so Randy Newman, surprisingly enough, wasn't guilty of making these kind of bland/pointless songs...think of them sort of like the oompa-loompa songs from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, meant to set up a tone/mood and show the budding camaraderie in the group...to be honest, my only gripe was that there wasn't any context shown before the songs were sung, unlike in the book.
As far as the rest of it, I think it's just creative liberties...the sharks in the book (yes there was more than one) weren't mechanical, they were real...perhaps they used a mechanical shark and only one because they were limited on their budget and couldn't waste time on making realistic models of sharks to animate, so they resorted to one super-mega-shark. The dream James had actually had a purpose, however, as the shapes of his aunts, instead of the rhino, are shown in a pile of dark, looming clouds. This supports what I mentioned earlier about the aunts most likely being the ones who killed James' parents...perhaps his dream is his sub-conscious attempting to deal with memories or thoughts his mind blocked out in a way that wouldn't induce severe psychological trauma, similar to victims of abuse who suffer from PTSD.
In my opinion, when looking at the film this way, it's sort of like a simpler, children's version of Fight Club...hidden messages and a hidden sub-plot that explains just what was really happening under the confusing and seemingly non-sequetor appearance.
I personally give it a 7/10...a few annoying flaws were in the movie that should have been fixed before it was released, such as context for the songs some of the insects sing, and maybe some songs should have been removed and replaced with more quiet, somber scenes, but overall this movie is pretty good. I loved it as a kid, and the hidden meaning behind the film keeps me coming back.
Wafflefrogs101 Yes, that's in the book, but James in the movie never mentions anything about actually seeing it, only that his aunts told him it exists and killed his parents. The point I'm getting at is that the movie may have portrayed the rhino differently than in that book. In the book, the rhino is a metaphor for death. It could be literally a rhino, or it could be sickness...it's never described.
However, if you think about it, the movie sort of makes the rhino seem much more fake than the book did, perhaps implying that it was a lie devised by his horrible aunts.
Rhinos are herbivores... But, screw, it's a fucking book/movie, nobody gives two shits about logic.
I identify as a rhino and when people generalise I get triggered, when kids dress up as rhinos I get triggered, when I see nature programmes I get triggered.
The Majestic Melon the rhino was symbolic of a bomb raid, the writer was in ww2 and so a lot of his books have subtle references to the war.
The Majestic Melon Rhino's have been known to kill people if step on to their territory but yeah the Rhino thing makes no sense in the book or movie. Though Roald Dahl was a dark author so that might explain things.
Queenofawesome2524 Yes but that would defeat the point.
Junkyard Jams Wasn't it explained in the book that the Rhino escaped from
a zoo or something?
4:45 we need more memes of this
I'm gonna make one okay?
"Where's this loner backstory come from?" Maybe they're just trying to make the spider not so one dimensional. Make sense?
Not to mention Rhinos are vegetarians.
NRsilver23 Yeah, herbivores. Although, this one can also shoot lightning and fly through the sky in a cloud, so I think it's a bit different.
The only part I remember from this movie is the part where they get hungry and eat some of the peach. Weird memories
Salvo Gaming the funny thing is that I LOVE this movie. My mother on the other hand HATES it.
Jae Pencil it’s one of my favourites, like a fairy tale
That was probably the only thing that also happened in the book.
I love Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas. This movie has none of the great feel or the charm of those movies.
That's for you, maybe. Someone, including me, appreciates all three of them (Nightmare before Christmas, Coraline, James and the Giant Peach). + Corpse Bride. + Frankenweenie.
@@СергийТихомиров-в4н Nah, this film sucks
@@MadameCorgi Nah, it's not. :-) (we can go on forever like that if you like)
In the book, the rhino escaped from London zoo
They really should have kept that part of the book in the movie. Really would have made much more sense than just a random rhino appearing out of the sky.
R.I.P Nostalgia Critic
Cause of death: You don't wanna know
An angry rhyno eated him for no reason
Rhinoz..they scare little boys
@@springingsometraps9036 Azazinaiting padents, don't bring e'm much joy, that's randy
The press conference was amazing. Actually best apology ever.
The thing I like about this movie is that it does capture my imagination.
Also I like how despite how meta textual this entire video is, people are still upset that he criticized this movie.
honestly my favorite character in this movie is Ms. Spider. I don’t know why but I feel like she stands out the most in this movie. And honestly
The subplot of the others being afraid of her would be great, which will give her character development to be more social.
Mommy spider