Review: The BFG

Young Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) becomes friends with the title giant (A CG-enhanced Mark Rylance), who unlike his brethren is friendly and doesn’t eat children. Well gee, that’s nice of him isn’t it?

I loved Roald Dahl books when I was a kid, especially Matilda, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, and The Twits. I do know I read and liked The BFG when I was a young ‘un, but along with Fantastic Mr. Fox, it was my first exposure to Dahl, and my memory of it has faded a whole helluva lot in the last 30 years or so. This 2016 film adaptation by the highly respected Steven Spielberg (“Jaws”, “ET: The Extra Terrestrial”, “War of the Worlds”, “Minority Report”) and late screenwriter Melissa Mathison (“ET”) makes me want to revisit the book, as I’m pretty sure it was a lot better than what the normally reliable filmmaker presents to us here.

The early scenes are a bit too reminiscent of “ET” for my liking, and after a while you realise that there’s just not all that much story here to stretch to feature length. It looks great, Mark Rylance is absolutely perfect (The BFG looks and sound exactly like you’ve probably imagined on the page), but once the basic premise is set up…it’s rather inert. There simply isn’t enough going on and lead actress Ruby Barnhill lacks the necessary charm for such an important role. It all kinda stops dead after a while, despite Rylance’s fine efforts (and his characters’ charming turns of phrase) and some excellent lighting. Stretching this to beyond 90 minutes was a very bad idea.

I said that the film looks great, and indeed the interiors, the cinematography by Janusz Kaminski (“Schindler’s List”, “Saving Private Ryan”, “Minority Report”) are all essentially very, very fine indeed. However, possibly because Spielberg has made the idiotic fad-based decision to shoot in 3D, the FX aren’t quite as strong as one would like, shattering the illusion a bit. Just as Peter Jackson struggled with it in the “Hobbit” films, Spielberg gets the perspective/scale wrong here on many an occasion. 3D makes ‘forced perspective’ difficult, so for the “Hobbit” films, Jackson was forced to try and work his way around it and failed. Spielberg appears to have had similar troubles. The BFG is smaller than other giants, yet the girl is seen at the same size to both the BFG and the other giants. It’s askew, and a real distraction once you’ve cottoned on to it. I also have to say that absolutely no attention has been paid to the weight of the CG/motion capture characters, either. They could’ve been balloons really, as surely you’d hear the giants coming from several miles away. Meanwhile, why does Rebecca Hall suddenly emerge 75 minutes into the film? A really sloppy piece of storytelling and a waste of a very fine and charismatic actress. As much as I know it’s in the source material, the inclusion of the Queen here gives zero attempt at making a convincing QEII, beyond the corgis. Surely the British cast would’ve brought this to Mr. Spielberg’s attention at some point? If it was an intentional casting/character choice, it was an idiotic one.

A pretty average film from a normally above-average filmmaker who really needs to leave the world of 3D for a good while and get back to storytelling first, technology second. Nice, Danny Elfman-esque music score by John Williams (“Jaws”, “Star Wars”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “Home Alone”), though. Read the book instead, as the lack of a real plot or character depth for the protagonist won’t matter nearly as much on the printed page where she’s basically a reader surrogate. Here in film form, it loses steam after a while, despite a perfect Mark Rylance in the title role and a few really nice touches here and there. I liked enough of it to wish I liked a helluva lot more of it.

Rating: C+