The BFG (2016) review

Disney’s newest live-action flick, The BFG, certainly has a lot of prestige behind it in regards to its behind-the-scenes talent. Of course it all starts with its director, Steven Spielberg, the man who needs no introduction as he is quite arguably the most famous director in the entire film industry, having helmed numerous classics in his nearly six decades long career from the Indiana Jones films to Saving Private Ryan. This film, which also serves as his first directorial effort under the Disney banner, even sees him reteaming with one of his former collaborators, the late Melissa Mathison, who wrote Spielberg’s 1982 family classic, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which this new film definitely shares a few similarities with. But the other big ‘star’ of the picture is the author of its source material; Roald Dahl. Dahl of course was one of the most famous children’s authors of all time, having penned numerous classics such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. This new film in particular is based off of his 1982 book of the same name, which centers on a young girl named Sophie and her adventures with a benevolent big-eared giant who is named the ‘Big Friendly Giant’, or ‘BFG’ for short, hence the title of the story. Previously there was a British animated TV adaptation of the story in 1989 but this is the first time that a live-action version has been made. And with the combined forces of Spielberg’s filmmaking mastery and Dahl’s imaginative writing at hand, The BFG is a very charming and imaginative family flick that very much wears its heart on its sleeve.

 

The film opens with a young girl named Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) living in a London orphanage. One night, while she is still awake even at 3:00 in the morning, she looks out of her bedroom window and sees a giant across the way. Said giant ends up coming to the window and snatches her up from right out of her bed. He then proceeds to take her to his home in the magical realm of Giant Country. But while Sophie initially fears that he’ll eat her, the giant, who refers to himself as the ‘Big Friendly Giant’ (Mark Rylance), proves to be just as friendly as his name suggests and is shown to only eat a disgusting vegetable known as a snozzcumber. During her time spent with the ‘BFG’ (the nickname that she ends up giving to him), Sophie learns that he is a dream-catcher. He catches dreams from another magical part of Giant Country and then proceeds to give them to sleeping children all over the world. Unfortunately for Sophie, while the 24-foot tall BFG proves to be a nice giant, there are also bad giants in Giant Country as well. Namely, a group of giants that are twice the size of the BFG, led by ‘the Fleshlumpeater’ (Jemaine Clement), that do eat ‘human beans’ and constantly bully the BFG around, as he is ‘a runt’ compared to them. This leads to Sophie and the BFG looking to find a way to stop the villainous giants before they can eat any more ‘human beans’, which soon results in them getting some royal help from the Queen of England herself (Penelope Wilton).

This is one really nice-looking film as far as the visuals are concerned. Obviously a lot of it was done with CGI, namely in scenes set in Giant Country in which Sophie is the only major ‘human’ character while all of the giants are created via motion-capture. And yet even with that said, the film does do a nice job of blending its ‘real’ and ‘digital’ elements together. Of course, being a Spielberg film, it’s certainly very well-made from a technical perspective. It’s well-shot by his go-to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, well-edited by his go-to editor Michael Kahn, features the usual solid score by John Williams, etc. But what about Spielberg’s method of adapting Dahl’s original story? I bring that up because prior to his death in 1990, Dahl was never a big fan of most of the film adaptations of his books due to the deviations that they made to his stories, most notably/infamously the 1971 adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, dubbed Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I’ll admit that I haven’t read The BFG so I can’t really comment on how faithful of an adaptation this is. Though from what I hear, Spielberg did tone down some of the darker elements of the story (e.g. the villainous giants aren’t as frightening as they are in the novel), something that Dahl has always been known for as a writer. But even with that said, Spielberg does still manage to give the film quite a lot of heart and charm while also very much translating the zany imagery of Dahl’s story to the big screen, resulting in plenty of creative visuals throughout. Really the only thing that holds this film back is that the plot is a bit aimless though to be fair I guess that was the case with the book as well.

The BFG sees Spielberg reteaming with Mark Rylance, who starred in Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies last year and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (and deservedly so I might add for those still bummed that he beat out Sylvester Stallone) for his work as Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. This time around Rylance stars in the title role of the BFG and once again he is fantastic. While the role does require him to do a lot of motion-capture work, he works with it just as well as Andy Serkis does on a regular basis and very much succeeds in making the BFG a very endearing character and one that very much lives up to his title as a ‘big and friendly’ giant. As Sophie, this film marks the film debut of Ruby Barnhill and she makes a pretty darn excellent first impression. Conveying a great amount of maturity and spunk for her age, she also does a really good job in regards to making her interactions with characters created via motion-capture feel as real as possible. Rylance and Barnhill work off of each other extremely well and you can definitely sense the great friendship that emerges between them. Because Sophie and the BFG are the main focus of the film, other characters aren’t really given as much to do. The ones who arguably get stunted the most are actually the villainous giants. Sure they may seem intimidating, and for the most part they are in terms of how they tower over both Sophie and the BFG, but the film really doesn’t do much with them, which is probably an example of how the film eschews plenty of the story’s darker elements. And of the lot, the only one who gets any major amount of screen-time is Jemaine Clement’s Fleshlumpeater.  

The BFG is Steven Spielberg’s first live-action family flick in quite some time, as he’s come quite a long way since his days working on E.T., now helming Oscar-winning adult dramas like Bridge of Spies and Schindler’s List. One could say that this film is very much reminiscent of E.T. in terms of its overall light-hearted tone and charm. In this case, it certainly helps that Spielberg gets to use the imaginative worlds and characters of Roald Dahl and while the film may not entirely please fans of the book due to its more toned-down nature, it still very much captures the fantastical imagery of Dahl’s story to a fault. And while there may be some plot issues, namely in the form of its underdeveloped villains, the film itself is exactly what you would expect from a Spielberg in terms of how well-made it is on pretty much every level, from the visuals to the editing to the cinematography and so on and so forth. Clearly Spielberg set out to make a very charming and imaginative family film a la E.T. and he very much succeeded in that regard. As a result, families will no doubt get a kick out of Spielberg’s latest offering. Heck, pretty much any Spielberg film is worth checking out in theaters if you ask me. As for this film, I have the feeling that kids will probably get more out of it than adults but no matter what, it’s still very much a whizz-popping good time for all.

Rating: 4.5/5