Movie Review – The BFG

NOT SUCH A BFD

The BFG

Review by Paul Preston

How is The BFG, the first team up between Disney and director Steven Spielberg not a bigger deal? Dammit, I’ve lived too long, haven’t I? Now, younger filmgoers really react to Marvel, Star Wars and Harry Potter. The days of the director are past. Truth is, Spielberg isn’t helping his case by making an underwritten, meandering fantasy tale that won’t capture the attention of young filmgoers anytime soon.

For the past ten years of his career, I’ve found Spielberg more successful at making films for an adult audience. He’s made them his whole career (Schindler’s List, The Color Purple), but around the same time, he’d make some of his biggest fantasy pictures (Jurassic Park, E.T.) to become one of the most admired and successful directors of all time. These days, the merit of films like Lincoln, Bridge of Spies and Munich far outweighs that of his fantasy films The Adventures of Tintin, worst-film-I’ve-ever-seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and now…The BFG. Perhaps Spielberg should just pull an Eastwood and put together a roster of nothing but prestige projects, you don’t see Clint working alongside orangutans any more and it seems to be panning out.

The biggest block between me watching and me enjoying The BFG was the story. I know this is based on a classic Roald Dahl novel – one I’ve never read, but having read Danny, the Champion of the World, Henry Sugar, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and Giant Peach, I was excited for some new-to-me Dahl. The story concerns a building-high giant (who will come to be called The BFG – Big Friendly Giant) wandering the streets of London, distributing dreams to sleeping families. He does this with a stealthy approach, but yet is spotted by Sophie, a young girl in an orphanage. He swipes Sophie away for fear she’ll spill the beans about there bein’ giants about, and brings her back to Giant Country to live out her days.

At the top, there’s a lack of dramatic tension, as the orphanage Sophie can’t wait to exit is never portrayed as a horrible place with horrible people. Sophie says it, but we don’t see it. Later, in Giant Country, there are revealed to be a number of nefarious giants who would eat Sophie, but that’s about as bad as they are, outside of being bullying. There’s never really an antagonistic threat in the entire film. Towards the finale, The BFG and Sophie need to enlist the help of other Londoners right up to The Royal Family to help squander the evil giants, but we never saw those giants being particularly evil. I was at a loss for why they were going to Buckingham Palace and what they hoped to accomplish. Apparently, it turns out, giants are snatching up and eating children throughout London, but the only child-napper I had seen in action up until then was The BFG!

It’s an ill-defined storyline, for sure, muddled further by the stop in Buckingham Palace, where the movie takes a break from being an exciting fantasy adventure to be a fish-out-of-water “Crocodile” Dundee comedy that goes on way too long, and delivers up jokes we’ve already seen. So, to sum up – never saw enough plot that built a sense of danger, saw way too many fart jokes.

Mark Rylance (with motion capture) plays The BFG and gives him a voice that’s odd and playful (with shades of Irish). Throughout there is dialogue the likes of “Titchy little snapperwhippers like you should not be higgling around with an old sage and onions who is hundreds of years more than you.” Dahl’s crackpot take on the English language is damn-near Seussian, and it’s fun. Janusz Kaminski’s (combined with the VFX team) photography seeks out new angles and points-of-view to enhance what it must be like to be in the presence of a giant, but the overall pace slogs not only in the already mentioned pre-finale comedy scene, but in long stretches of dialogue (which seems to be repeated, too).

The finale is an ingeniously pulled-off action sequence, mostly from Sophie’s close-to-the-ground POV, but quite often the movie is just another Jack the Giant Slayer, character-design-wise (not a good thing).

There are moments when the score is distinctly John Williams, but this is another one built without themes. I think the different factions of giants could’ve used separate themes.

But worry not, kids, audiences are ensured their daily dose of a good ‘ol “shot to the nuts”, and to a giant no less!
(sigh)
 
 
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Release Date: July 1, 2016
Run Time: 117 Minutes
Country: USA
Rated: PG
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures