I just added Babe: Pig in the City to
Submitted by jim on Fri, 12/17/1999 - 12:25
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I just added Babe: Pig in the City to this list. I considered started a new list titled, "Roald Dahlesque Movies", but couldn't think of anything to add beyond Pig in the City, the obvious ones (Willy Wonka and James & the Giant Peach), and some Tim Burton movies. What else could I add?
I'm not sure about Burton -- Edward ScissorHands (iirc) did not have a happy ending for Edward, and I'm not sure Nightmare did either.
Roald Dahl's thing seems to be kids who start off in less than ideal situations and then, through extraordinary circumstances find a happy ending: Travelling across an ocean in a giant peach, discovering telekinesis (Mathilda), becoming owner of a chocolate factory, etc.
(My wife (1st grade schoolteacher) and I once had a discussion about just how bizarre and screwed up Dahl's childhood must have been.)
Anyway, he strikes me as being kind of dickens-ish. (Although I've not read much Dickens.)
Okay, so I got a little off topic. Sorry. And I have to remember not to put paragraph marks in.
Anyway, how about The Princess Bride? Some pretty fantastic adventures there, with a definite happy ending.
How about Pete's Dragon, or any of a lot of other Disney films? Disney movies don't seem to have that shadow of darkness (or bizarreness?) that haunts Dahl's work.
Yeah, I hadn't considered the ultimately happy ending of most Dahl works, which does rule out a lot of Tim Burton's movies. I guess I was thinking more of that dark, somewhat surreal edge that I felt in the Roald Dahl books I'd read. Babe: Pig in the City just felt like a Dahl book to me.
Regarding Disney, while most of the movies do follow the same Cinderella-style progression that Dahl's books do, I didn't really think they had that essential weirdness that Dahl has, and that was kinda the element I was keying on. As for The Princess Bride, while I loved it, there is barely an ounce of darkness in the whole movie, so I figure that disqualifies it. :)
And I think I fixed the paragraph thing.
Surrealism -- that's the thing about Dahl (along with the darkness.) Stretching it a bit, how about Hudson Hawk? Not quite as dark, but certainly bizarre.
Ooh yeah, it did kinda have that Willy Wonka feel at times.