Two Brothers/ 5 Children and It / James and the Giant Peach

Box set containing three popular family movies. ‘Five Children and It’ (2004) is an adaptation of the classic children’s novel by E. Nesbit. During the First World War a group of children are sent to stay with their eccentric Uncle Albert (Kenneth Branagh). There, they meet ‘It’, a Psammead – or sand fairy – in a gravel pit. This ancient, peculiar and rather irritable creature (voiced by Eddie Izzard) has the power to grant the children a wish every day, that will last until sunset. But the children soon discover it is harder than one might imagine to think of sensible wishes – and each one gets them into all kinds of unexpected scrapes. ‘Two Brothers’ (2004) tells the story of two tiger cubs born in the jungle in 1920s Indochina: one bold and fierce, the other shy and gentle. When notorious hunter Aidan McRory (Guy Pearce) kills their father, they are separated. The bold cub is sold to a circus where living in a cage robs him of his spirit, while the shy cub becomes the companion of the governor’s lonely son – but the family are forced to give him away to a man who is intent on turning him into a prize-fighter. Years later the brothers meet again – but as forced enemies, pitted against each other in the ring. Will they ever return to their natural life in the jungle, where they can live in harmony as brothers once again? Finally, in ‘James and the Giant Peach’ (1996), when his parents are killed by a giant rhino, James Henry Trotter (Paul Terry) has to go and live with his nasty aunts Spiker (Joanna Lumley) and Sponge (Miriam Margolyes). However, after he is given magic crocodile tongues by a stranger, amazing things begin to happen. James escapes from his aunts by climbing inside a giant peach, and setting off with all the friendly, talking insects who live inside it. A mixture of live action for the out-of-peach sequences and animation for the main part of the story.