May 052016
 
one reel

Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) is a lonely, insomniac orphan. Awake far too late for a little girl, she spies a giant (Mark Rylance) roaming the streets. He, in return, sees her, and kidnaps her so she can’t tell anyone, taking her back to Giantland. Quickly it is revealed that he is a kindly giant who delivers dreams, surrounded by nine much larger, cruel and stupid child-eating giants.

The BFG was a surprise failure. With Steven Spielberg at the helm, a script based on a book by Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and the very latest and greatest in motion capture effects, it was a license to print money. Or not. Poor marketing and bad timing (the film had been in the planning stages for years) were mainly to blame, though children shrugged through screenings and parents found more to admire than enjoy. The BFG is at times wondrous, but just as often infuriating, and the whole is lacking.

The BFG could and should have been a clever family film, but it is instead a children’s movie, in the worst sense of the term. Everything is simple and blatant. Quips and loud music replace earned emotion, and bright flashy colors are meant to distract the short-attention-span viewer. Plot doesn’t pop up till the last third and substantial time is set aside for a reoccurring flatulence joke. Its messages that “bullying is mean” and “stand up to bullies”—right out of the 1950s—are delivered with all the subtlety of a tuba blast with your face in the bell.

Children deserve better. Families deserve a different movie.

There’s no question The BFG is a superb technical achievement. In a normal year I’d say it was a shoo-in for an FX award for its motion capture CGI work. But this is the year of the “live action” Jungle Book and the return of Governor Tarkin, which makes it a year too late. Still, the work is excellent, and the dream-catching scene is particularly fetching. But it is all to no purpose. We’re shown Giantland purely because it is nice to look at. With no story kicking in until the final moments, it’s all just pretty lights.

Ruby Barnhill is cute and spunky enough, but her Sophie is aimless and annoying. Ignoring danger and suicidal leaps to get attention are not adorable. Some “smart” to go with the spunky would have helped. The giant is nicely constructed and Rylance’s voice work is solid, but he isn’t engaging and is a side-kick in search of a protagonist who never arrives.

There is some nice concepts surrounding dreams that could have been the core of a better film. But those nice concepts, instead of helping, just point out where the film didn’t go and how it failed.

Perhaps someone should have informed the filmmakers that since the children’s book was written, “BFG” has picked up a meaning: Big Fucking Gun. But blindness to the last twenty years could explain the whole movie.

 Fantasy, Reviews Tagged with: