What could be a very beautiful and captivating story was a wasted unusually long 79 minutes of time. The human characters were very annoying. The music (sorry Randy Newman)was terrible. The score was not bad, but the songs simply reeked.<br /><br />As far as the story, I confess that I've never read the book that it's based on, but I found parts of it charming, and other parts a bit strange. Ok, the abused orphan boy, and magical giant peach, leading to boy's escape to NY is very nice. The fantasy elements are introduced by these glowing green seeds which produce the peach.. and therefore everything inside is fantasy. But what about these other absurities? What's with the mechanical shark? What's this rhinocerous that comes from a storm cloud and kills James' parents?<br /><br />Don't get me wrong, I love absurdities. But I also like consistency and this movie just seems to have no guidelines of what should be fantasy and what should be reality.<br /><br />Sad but true, the most entertaining aspect of this film was the amusement I received from James' speech impediment, ("I'm not afwaid of you!"). On a side note, just like "Nightmare before Christmas", the animation is great! But this movie sadly needed some Burton and Elfman touches.