With Charm to Spare: A Review of The BFG

directed by Steven Spielberg
written by Melissa Mathison

After sitting through a glut of sequels, reboots or remakes over the last few months, the quality of which has ranged from the fantastic (Civil War) to the distinctly uninspired (Jason Bourne), I fervently longed to watch a new film, meaning something that is neither a sequel or a remake, regardless of whether it was original material or adapted from another medium. I thought I'd found it in Warner Brothers' Suicide Squad, which presented the novel idea of a superhero film centered around supervillains, but while it was decent, that turned out to be a somewhat derivative action flick.

Truth be told, I hadn't even really planned on watching Steven Spielberg's adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel The BFG; I had thought of just getting it on DVD or watching it on cable, but when my daughter asked me very nicely if we could see it, I really couldn't resist and so we went to see it, and boy, am I glad we did.

Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) is an orphan who lives and a London orphanage and who can't sleep at night, as a result of which she walks around the orphanage in the wee hours. During one such nightly patrol, she sees a giant hand picking up a trash can, and as she gasps in fright she alerts the giant (Mark Rylance) who, fearing that she will betray his existence to the world, kidnaps her and brings her back to his land, giant country. There, after being understandably upset at being kidnapped, Sophie learns more about the "Big Friendly Giant" and comes to empathize with him. She also eventually discovers why he was wandering around London in the first place: he gives people their dreams, which he harvests from a magical tree. As wonderful as this is, she also discovers the BFG's unpleasant reality: he is regularly bullied by nine much bigger giants than he, led by the fearsome Fleshlumpeater (Jemaine Clement). Unlike the BFG, who only eats an awful vegetable that grows in his country, the giants eat flesh, and in fact ate the last human the BFG brought to his home. Sophie then hatches a plan to deal with the brutes once and for all.

The BFG marks Spielberg's return to live-action pop culture for the first time since he made the reviled 2008 sequel to the Indiana Jones franchise, and while this movie may not have had the built-in box-office strength of that sturdy franchise, it was head and shoulders its superior in terms of sheer storytelling. This movie has the kind of storytelling verve that made kid-oriented movies like E.T. so eminently watchable; the lead characters Sophie and the titular BFG, are eminently likable, which is really quite something considering that the latter is effectively a kidnapper. Credit must go to Rylance for a truly endearing performance; I missed his Oscar-winning turn in last year's Bridge of Spies, but after this film, I'm definitely a fan and will check out Spielberg's Cold War opus as soon as I am able. Newcomer Barnhill channels the charm of one-time child actress and fellow Dahl veteran Mara Wilson, who played the title character in the 1996 adaptation of Matilda.

But there's more to it than the performances; the visuals, the music and the overall storytelling evoke a wonderful sense of whimsy I haven't seen in a while. I'm a fan of Roald Dahl adaptations like Henry Selick's James and the Giant Peach and Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox, both stop-motion animated films, more than the somewhat perfunctory live-action adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Tim Burton (which, incidentally, remains the most successful adaptation of a Roald Dahl novel to date), and The BFG feels a lot more like its stop-motion siblings than its live-action one. There's quite a lot of heart to it, as well. The scene in which the BFG shows Sophie his "dream catching ground" which can only be reached by jumping into an enchanted lake and coming out on the other side, is just pure magic. It also helps that the legendary John Williams is in top form here, doing so much more than the rehashing of Star Wars themes that kept him busy last year.

For some reason, Roald Dahl adaptations, with the exception of the aforementioned Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, do not fare particularly well at the box-office, despite several adaptations that date back to the 1990s. It saddens me that a storyteller whose work has been embraced by generations of readers, for some reason, is not similarly appreciated on the big screen. The Fantastic Mr. Fox did not even come out here in theaters in the Philippines. Maybe someday, someone will crack the secret to both winning box-office battles and crafting a film that captures the magic of his books, but until then I will be happy to patronize films like this one.

7.5/10