Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

When the wife put this on, I shrugged. It was nothing I cared to watch, but not out of any strong feelings. I just didn’t care. And after watching it, my ambivalence was justified. Somebody watched X-Men, played Dead Space, and smashed the two together. It’s fine for a kid’s movie, maybe a little dark and grim for the younger ages, but it does its job at being an adventure most kids will like. But it is an amazingly forgettable movie. Characters are little more than embodiments of a singular trait. I didn’t know until deep into it that this was directed by Tim Burton. This has none of his flair. It feels like a movie-for-hire job, not his usual passion project. And while it’s nice he doesn’t lean on most of his crutches (Johnny Depp and Helena Bonhan-Carter are nowhere to be seen), that also exposes how little he has in the cupboard without them … or, it could be argued, even with them. This is a largely harmless movie, perhaps 15 minutes too long, and definitely too close to horrific for little ones. For older kids and young teens, it’s a fine way to pass two hours, and parents won’t feel themselves getting older watching it. But they likely won’t get anything out of it either.