As part of a fundraising campaign for Partners In Health - a global health organisation striving to make health care a human right for all people, starting with those who need it the most - various celebrities are stepping in to take part in video readings of various well known children’s books.
From Meryl Streep to Cara Delevigne and Benedict Cumberbatch, there’s a variety of well-known faces and voices stepping in to help at a time of need and uncertainty, and at a time where we could all benefit from the comfort brought from having a bedtime story read to us.
Academy award-winning filmmaker, Taika Waititi (who has written and directed films including Eagle vs. Shark (2009), Boy (2010), What We Do In The Shadows (2014) and JoJo Rabbit (2019), who has also had various acting roles from “Thomas Kalmaku” in the 2011 film Green Lantern, Adolf Hitler in JoJo Rabbit and also directed several popular television shows including several episodes of The Inbetweeners) is the leader in this charity campaign, and in part one, is joined by Chris and Liam Hemsworth - two Aussie brothers known for various films. Chris has starred in such films as Snow White And The Hunstmen, The Cabin In The Woods and Ghostbusters (2016), whilst younger brother Liam has appeared in films including The Hunger Games and opposite Rebel Wilson in romcom Isn’t It Romantic.
Taika Waititi starts us off on chapter one of Roald Dahl's perennial favourite book, James And The Giant Peach, where we meet four year old James Henry Trotter, who was living peacefully and leading a happy childhood, living in a huge house by the sea with his parents, until a fatal day in London when a terrible thing happened. Waititi even adds his own sound effects so you can imagine yourself living by the side of the ocean. (A soothing sound and something I have really missed this year with no trips to the coast so far). Following the tragic and freak death of his parents, James is forced to go and live with his two mean Aunts - carrying nothing but a small suitcase containing a pair of pyjamas and a toothbrush. By the end of page one, Waititi declares that he is “hooked” and interested to see what happens to poor James - “now that’s writing!” he exclaims. I have to agree with him there, it was Roald Dahls’ books that got me hooked on reading as a child, with Esio Trot being the first book I really remember reading and being enthralled in, later progressing onto the longer and somewhat darker ones such as The BFG and The Witches.
James's mean Aunts - Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker (“they’re names kinda say it all don’t they?!" Waititi remarks, "I think we know where this is headed”) are really horrible people, selfish and cruel and they start to beat James from day one, never calling him by his first name but always referring to him with insults instead. He is given no toys and no picture books (just where were Social Services that’s what I often wondered as I got older and re-read the books!). His room is kept “as bare as a prison cell” but from the hill on which his Aunts old ramshackle of a house (in the South of England) sits on, James could look out on a clear day and see “for miles and miles” across the marvellous landscape of woods and fields, and on a very clear day, if James looked in the right direction James could see a tiny grey dot in the distance - which is the very same house that James used to live in with his beloved mother and father, and just beyond that tiny grey dot you could see the ocean itself - a long thin streak of blackish blue like a strip of ink beneath the sky.
By the start of the next chapter, three years have passed (the perks of short books hey?!), with James living with and suffering the wrath of his evil Aunts, when one morning a rather strange and peculiar thing happened. It all started on a blazing hot summer's day; Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker along with James, were in the back garden - and as usual James was being put to work - this time he was chopping wood (cue Waititi whacking a butchers' knife on the side of a wooden chopping board for realistic sound effects!) - “that’s it” he proclaims - “it sounded just like that..” you see, “he was chopping wood for the kitchen stove” he explains. Meanwhile, James’s selfish and lazy aunts were sitting comfortably in deck chairs nearby, watching James to make sure he didn’t stop working for one single moment.
Aunt Sponge was enormously large and very short - like a great white doggy over-boiled cabbage, Aunt Spiker on the other hand was tall, skinny and boney with clip-on spectacles at the end of her nose, with a screeching voice. Chris Hemsworth proves he’s going to be a fantastic “Aunt” to watch and listen to from the moment he reads his first line from the book, as he struggles fighting back the laughter putting on this super-high-pitched and screechy voice. James soon stops chopping wood, and lets tears run down his face as he imagines what other children his age would be doing that very moment. Some would be riding tricycles in their gardens, others would be in the cool woods picking bunches of wild flowers. All his little friends from his days living happily with his parents, would be playing in the wet sand and splashing about in the water. “What’s the matter with you?!” screeched Aunt Spiker, glaring at him over the top of her steel spectacles. “Stop that immediately”, she yells at James. He runs off from his Aunts and toward a rustling of leaves (more realistic sound effects from Waitiki) and an old man (voiced by Nick Kroll) who soon approaches James with a small white bag and offers it to him. Little does James know what magic lies within the bag..
Nick Kroll had me laughing so hard I almost choked on a grape, at one point he misses his line and laughs saying (in the hilarious voice of the little old man) “ I forgot to highlight this line...I’m an old man, highlighters are new to me!” By this stage, all are too hysterical to continue reading.
Once they resume and commence chapter four, James Henry Trotter has listened closely to the old man's instructions with what to do with the contents of the white paper bag....part two of the video story will hopefully give us a clue as to what exactly the old man handed James.
The story is done as a video chat (similar to Zoom) so depending on which characters are speaking, sometimes we see one actor, and other times a three way screen or four way screen. Despite the actors being in separate houses, the chemistry between them all makes it feel like they’re all in the same room, and if you close your eyes it’s easy to imagine them on stage together all in costume acting out their roles. I can’t wait for part two now...watch this space!
Roald Dahl Story Company will match every donation made - so everyone wins!
Reviewer - Lottie Davis-Browne
on - 7/10/20
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