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The BFG - Review: Wonderous visuals, stalling story


The BFG - Review: Wonderous visuals, stalling story
7 out of 10

When the orphaned Sophie (Ruby Barnhill – debut) spies the Big Friendly Giant aka BFG (Mark Rylance – Bridge of Spies) from her window, he whisks her away to the Land of the Giants. After learning that BFGs much bigger giant brothers have been snatching and eating children, Sophie devises a plan to stop them with a little help from The Queen.

Let’s start by clarifying that this film contains no Big “Fragging” Guns of any calibre in case anyone is expecting a lot of green plasma. Instead the words you should be noting are “Steven Spielberg” on director duties because the film is pretty much what you would expect from his undertaken of any fantasy based story. He drops us, as an audience, into an immersive world of wonder and spectacle based around the familiar staples of a story (and popular 1989 animated feature) many grew up with. The level of detail on show in places like the BFG's home is astounding with almost a giant Borrowers approach to room furnishings. Look closely and you’ll see the bench of his table is a Spitfire wing or that his dream mixing gadget is a Penny Farthing. It really helps to keep the film feeling engaging despite quite a slow moving story clearly designed to move at the pace of younger viewers. Visually, the standout sequence sees the pair on a dream-catching venture that’s every bit as luminescent and delightful as it should be. In this and many other sequences, the music plays a crucial role as (yep, you guessed it) John Williams scores drift in the background like leaves playfully caught in a breeze.  It all helps create a very welcome and reassuring feel in film as a vehicle especially for those with such a personal attachment to the story. It may look a bit different than you expected and is even occasionally quite dark, but this is not in any way a cash in remake, merely a re-telling to inspire a new generation. But the film’s biggest success by far is how well they’ve captured the central relationship between girl and giant. The combination of Mark Rylance’s motion capture and a lot of superb CG rendering over his facial expressions very naturally portray him as a kind-hearted but sad and lonely old timer. Despite being in the same inexperienced acting deep end as The Jungle Book’s Neel Sethi (spending almost the entire with imaginary co-stars), just like Sethi, Ruby Barnhill does have odd moments where she’s less convincing but overall does a great job anchoring the film while the big man takes much of the spotlight.

In terms of problems there is occasionally the sense of an inconstant tone. Spielberg shows a clear determination to inject more emotion into the story for greater adult audience appeal (like a small subplot of BFG taking bringing home a prior child to Sophie) but at the same time, it gets dragged into very childish territory due to certain required elements... aka whizzpopping. Yes, this film does contain very prominent and even cringe-worthy fart jokes, which may be a deal breaker for some viewers. However, it must be saidthat its biggest “blow out” is built up and teased in a very fun way.

Then there’s the pacing of the story, which as aforementioned is frequently much slower than it needs to be and despite having plenty to look at on screen overall the film does feel stretched at 2 hours in length. In fact, for significant periods of time, it doesn’t feel like anything is really happening as our big/little combo re-tread the same conversation points, and it certainly could have been streamlined better. That said, there are one or two the film’s more indulgent dilly dallying is most welcome. In keeping with the classic story, we see Sophie and The BFG pay a visit Buckingham Palace but when this plays out into the palace staff having to improvise formal breakfast dinging arrangements for a giant, the results are brilliantly hilarious (helped Penelope Wilton and Rafe Spall making great small turns as Queen and nervous butler respectively). The biggest letdown is the lack of a rewarding villain presence. These incarnations of Bonecruncher, Gizzardgulper and the rest never feel anything more than mild comic relief and are not a patch on their animated cousins in terms of being menacing. Do we really need to hear our principle villain repeatedly say “I got a boo boo”?

So what we have here is best compared to Disney’s recent run of live-action remakes of animated classics. It looks absolutely magnificent with stunning visual achievements that should not be understated. Yet in trying to stretch and draw the basic story of a children’s tale, this box office giant trips over itself in its bigger strides. There’s plenty of good nostalgia to be had for adult viewers even the greater appeal lies with the younger audience. It’s big, it’s certainly friendly but it may not quite stand tall to your expectations.

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