Walt Disney Pictures
Steven Spielberg has directed enough amazing movies that he kinda gets a lifetime pass unless he commits a terrible crime. The BFG is not a crime, but it is a disappointment. When I was kid, I read a lot of Roald Dahl books, and I liked most of them. “The BFG” book was one I didn’t get to until I was nearly a teenager, so at that point I didn’t find it particularly enchanting. But it was enjoyable in that meandering, weird Roald Dahl way. I have a pretty mixed relationship with adaptations of his books.
I may be the only one that liked the Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I don’t really like the original version, Gene Wilder aside. Fantastic Mr. Fox and James and the Giant Peach were too immature for me. Matilda had a kind of weird 90s charm, and The Witches movie was alright. His books love a lot of detail, sometimes excruciatingly so, but that doesn’t translate well to the screen.
And Spielberg has been responsible for directing some great family films, but are any of them as fanciful as The BFG? Even among Dahl’s books, this one doesn’t have much bite.
The BFG is primarily about two people, a young orphan girl named Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) and the aforementioned Big Friendly Giant (Mark Rylance). All of the giants are done with CGI and motion tracking, and it’s … mixed. The problem is that all those special effects don’t really work, so it seems dissonant — it’s one thing to have an atmosphere of unreality, it’s another to jar you constantly because you never believe the BFG is carrying Sophie.
The story is quite simple. Sophie lives in an orphanage in London, and is a mild troublemaker. Sophie’s personality is that she’s smart and brave, but otherwise she’s a bit of a blank slate. She accidentally spots a giant one late night, and he steals her away to keep her from telling anyone about it. An inauspicious beginning, but soon they charm each other, as he reveals his secrets. He is the only decent giant, and responsible for giving dreams to people. Don’t question it further, it’s a fantasy.
There’s some physical humor, a few scares and gross outs, and a lovely sequence of lights and colors in the dreamscape. For a while they seem to have long, boring conversations and then action starts up again. The movie starts slow, but has some fun scenes, and the ending is interesting enough. But that middle stretch was a real struggle, and this movie is almost two hours long. It felt long to me.
Maybe it’s because this particular book of Dahl’s is one of his most whimsical. Maybe it’s because it’s forced to rely on imperfect CGI. But whatever it is, it doesn’t seem like a Spielberg movie. When he uses special effects, they tend to be imperceptible. Sure, you can look back at Jurassic Park in high-def now and realize that some of the computer graphically generated dinos look a little fake compared to the physical models they also used, but at the time, I can assure you we didn’t notice anything.
I think the story itself is one of the weaker ones, because it’s mostly a lot of conversations, interspersed with a few interesting action scenes. This is not to say that there’s isn’t a lot of craft here, but I wonder if Spielberg was willing to let more slide because he’s such a fan of the material, and it’s never been made into a live action movie before.
The acting of the two leads is pretty good, with Mark Rylance showing warmth and humor through all the CGI of his face, and Ruby Barnhill is charming if not particularly complex as Sophie. I was happy to notice some of the other giant voices being played by Jemaine Clement and Bill Hader, but they aren’t exactly such fascinating villains. I was watching this movie with a lot of kids, and I think the younger ones really liked it.
But I was sitting next to one young girl who was initially over-excited about the movie, being a huge fan of the books, but by the end her excitement had lessened significantly. For me, the movie seems average, and for a Spielberg movie, that’s basically poor. I don’t think most people will like this one, but as a family movie, well, it’s fine. The charm is there but you may find yourself nodding off in the middle of the movie. Or maybe not.
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