History YMMV / JamesAndTheGiantPeach

* ValuesDissonance: The word "ass" is thrown around as an insult occasionally, especially by the Centipede. Nowadays it's considered quite derogatory (although very tame compared to other swears), and is often considered unsuitable in children's books in the modern age.

* {{Narm}}:
** James has a thick accent that causes him to [[ElmuhFuddSyndwome replace some of his "r"s with "w" sounds.]] For American viewers, this can make him sound like a very young child and give his lines a certain level of Narm.
** A few of the special effects are [[SpecialEffectFailure quite unconvincing]], such as the clearly wooden seagull puppets, the clearly CGI-mechanical shark and ocean water, and the matte paintings used for NYC.

* FanficFuel: The magic crocodile tongues can make "marvelous things happen" wherever they go, turning a bunch of bugs into BenevolentMonsters, James into a {{Toon}} and causing a dead tree to grow a gargantuan peach in less than a minute. The bag the old man gave James was ''full'' of them and they are on the loose in Great Britain. What other weird, fantastical things are going on thanks to those slimy things?

* {{Applicability}}: The story can be seen as a metaphor for illegally immigrating for a better life.

* HoYay: A private violin performance of Bach's Partita No. 3, Gavotte en Rondeau, as their mode of transport soars over a moonlit sea seems to edge on the romantic side of things; especially when one considers how flustered Mr. Grasshopper is to be caught by James in the middle of things.

*** When James and Miss Spider go underwater to search for the Centipide, they swim near a figurehead of James's aunts. There is no explanation for this and it is completely ignored.
*** [[spoiler: TheStinger totally qualifies. An arcade game called "Spike the Aunts" is shown, where James's aunts are bashed by the rhino. It's bizarre and has no connection to the plot, [[FridgeHorror although it may give the implication that the aunts were killed by the rhino]]]].
* CrossesTheLineTwice: In true Creator/RoaldDahl fashion, James' parents abruptly getting eaten by a rhinoceros at the beginning of the story is so deliberately absurd that it's near-impossible to find it all that tragic. Even in the movie, where the rhinoceros is a mass of black clouds and lightning and very possibly a metaphor for something else, it's pretty ridiculous.

** James begins his adventure by entering a fantastical ribbed tunnel to a strange house, at the climax, he has to run to safety as platforms are being torn away beneath his feet, and he defiantly shouts "no, I'm not!" in the final confrontation. All of these are also experiences that the eponymous heroine of a [[{{WesternAnimation/Coraline}} later Selick film]] will have.

** James has a ''very'' thick accent that causes him to [[ElmuhFuddSyndwome replace some of his "r"s with "w" sounds.]] For American viewers, this can make him sound like a very young child and give his lines a certain level of Narm.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: The concept of turning the ordinary rhino that killed James's parents in the book into a Chernabog-esque EldritchAbomination itself was not a bad idea and could have worked perfectly. The trouble was that the writers were far too lazy with executing it, not giving it any backstory or apparent motive, making the concept confusing. Why did it attack James's parents in the first place? Were the aunts aware that it was a cloud monster in the beginning, or just taunting him? Why did the rhino wait until the group reached New York to attack them as opposed to earlier? Was it even real or just James's imagination?

*** Taken UpToEleven in the musical. We first see James in an orphanage having a nightmare about his parents' deaths. Then, the Matron Nurse tells him he's leaving the orphanage to go live with his aunts, whom he's never met while telling him not to be a nuisance because he can't ever go back to the orphanage. Spiker and Sponge take every opportunity to taunt James AND his deceased parents, call him worthless and threaten to put him down a well as punishment. To top it off, they destroy James's mother's scarf and his father's glasses IN FRONT OF HIM while telling him he has to sleep outside. And the best part? He's between the ages of six and eight (like the book), as the musical confirms James is young enough to still be afraid of the dark. By the time James has his second nightmare on the peach and tells the insects that his parents are dead, he's pretty much on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Thank goodness "Everywhere That You Are" starts up.

* NarmCharm: The robotic shark being obvious CGI manages to make it [[UncannyValley look even more creepy and unnatural.]]