Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

When one of your favorite books garners its own film adaptation, it can be tough to judge that film on its own merits. As a Harry Potter fan, I learned pretty early that sometimes you have to give up the ghost and enjoy book-to-movie adaptations for what they are: just another version of a good story.

The best adaptations find their voice and sing their own tune. The ones that fail aren’t the ones that try to copy their source material note for note, though. Instead, they tend to be the ones that try a little too hard and strain their voice as a result. Unfortunately, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” directed by Tim Burton and written by Jane Goldman, based on the 2011 book by Ransom Riggs, falls among the latter.

On paper, "Miss Peregrine's" is a perfectly Burton-esque story, one I used to describe as “creepy X-Men” upon reading the first book. After the violent and seemingly supernatural death of his beloved grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp), Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield of “Hugo”) travels to Wales hoping to find the children’s home his grandfather took refuge in during World War II.

Jake grew up with stories of this home and its odd inhabitants with special powers, from the boy with bees living in his stomach to the shapeshifting guardian called an ymbryne, who protects them all from monsters. After a humiliating day in class repeating those stories as a pre-teen, Jake has long since stopped believing in his grandfather's stories, until Abe's death hearkens right back to them.

Once in Wales and with the aid of a very clever bit of time travel called a loop, Jake finds the home, the guardian (the eponymous Miss Peregrine, played by Eva Green serviceably in the time she’s onscreen, making me miss "Penny Dreadful" more than ever), and the children (called Peculiars, thanks to their odd abilities), all living the same day over and over again in 1943. He finds that his grandfather’s stories were true — all of them, including the ones about monsters — and along the way, discovers that he inherited his grandfather’s very special peculiarity. Once Jake knows he’s peculiar, he has to make a choice: stay in 1943 and help the other children, or return to 2016 to continue living a normal life.

At the beginning and through the middle, “Miss Peregrine’s” follows the book’s set-up to the letter, with a great cast to fill it out (Judi Dench is even there for a second as another ymbryne). The peculiar children translate from page to screen very well, especially the creepy twins who are covered head-to-toe in the most unsettling of early 19th-century circus outfits and speak only in gravelly coos.

The first major change comes in the form of Emma (Ella Purnell), the eldest of the children who was Abe's childhood sweetheart and who, in a move that’s still as weird in the movie as it was in the book, becomes Jake’s sweetheart, too. She and another girl swap peculiarities in the movie to make Emma lighter than air, for no other reason than to make her a trademark Burton unattainable waif with deep-set eyes and an ethereal presence.

Personally, I wasn’t a fan of that change when it came out in the trailers, and I don’t think the movie justifies it with the one particular set piece Emma’s new powers make possible. It's an arbitrary change made annoying because, once again, there's no good reason for it. However, the biggest change comes at the end with a completely invented third act and a happy ending to follow that makes a sequel unlikely at best and unnecessary at worst. That one I’m actually OK with: this is a pretty self-contained movie, and it’ll work much better in the long run if no sequel follows it.

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t said much about Barron, the villain played by Samuel L. Jackson. That’s because that’s really all there is to say: he’s a villain, and he’s Samuel L. Jackson. Given Burton’s recent dismissive comments about this film’s (and, let’s face it, all of his films') lack of diversity, it’s not surprising that no one looked twice at that role and decided to cast Jackson as a mad scientist whose primary goal is the murder of (white) children for the sake of immortality. It’s alarming, but it’s not surprising. And it looks pretty bad within the movie itself, especially once Barron finally invades the protective loop to do what villains do best to innocent children and their guardians.

The most disappointing thing, though, is Burton’s lack of imagination stylistically within the movie. His is a style that is instantly recognizable no matter which one of his films you’re watching, but in “Miss Peregrine’s,” he doesn’t incorporate that style so much as rip himself off, over and over again and in the most obvious ways possible.

The monsters in “Beetlejuice,” the hedges and suburban uniformity in “Edward Scissorhands,” the trees in “Sleepy Hollow,” Alice’s entire visual signature in “Alice in Wonderland,” even the animated skeletons in “Bones,” the 2006 music video he directed for the Killers: they and much more are all here in “Miss Peregrine’s,” and they are weak compared to what came before.

All in all, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” is not a bad movie, but I think it’s a movie that will be best enjoyed by younger audiences with no familiarity of Burton’s older movies or of the book it’s based on. It’s one of the better movies Burton’s put out in recent years, better than "Dark Shadows" but not "Big Eyes," but it’s just so bland compared to previous outings that it’s a disappointment from start to finish.

And, let’s not forget, this is the second time in four years that Tim Burton has underutilized and/or completely misused Green, an actress whose talent and appearance should, on paper, perfectly suit his oeuvre.

But whatever it is that makes Tim Burton good on paper is probably stuck in its own time loop, circa the 1990s.