I thought this was going to be a blatant ripoff of Harry Potter and The X-Men, but turned out to be more of a ripoff of, well, all the terrible movies featuring teen heroes from the past decade or so. Kids are smart, adults are idiots, and the new kid who should be killed right off the bat turns out to be smarter and more powerful than everyone else.
On the plus side, I did kind of like it. This is a Grade A turn off your brain while you watch it film-nothing makes any sense. And I mean, Nothing.
Back in the good old days, during WWII, Brits living in big cities sent their kids off to live in relative safety in the county. Once the war was over, they could bring them come home and carry on with their lives. So that must have been the inspiration for this story. Only, well, the kids sent to a safe place here, are there FOREVER. So not so much saved, as imprisoned.
The costumes and sets are perfect, I liked all the actors, and the music wasn’t too annoying. A few of endless battle scenes were a bit clever. I enjoyed the bit where the heroes made invisible monsters visible. But even there, I kept expecting there to be someone from the Ministry of Magic showing up and yelling about using magic in front of the Muggles. It seems kind of unlikely that hordes of monsters, both good and bad, wandering around the streets of Blackpool wouldn’t catch someone’s attention. And there is never any explanation for any of the powers that the Peculiar have, no rhyme or reason why anyone does anything.
It was kind of fun and kind of silly and the handful of menacing folks didn’t see quite as menacing as they could be. At least not when compared to the superhuman children they are battling. It does make me wonder how these saps won the battles at other Schools.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was not great, but not terrible either.
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