Film Review: The BFG

The darkness of Roald Dahl’s work has always come from his deep distrust of adults.
From Matilda to The Witches, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and more, the grown-ups and institutions in Dahl’s books are often heartless and corrupt – the result of Dahl’s traumatic experiences of corporal punishment as a child. It’s against this darkness that his precocious, resilient and ever-hopeful lead characters shine; these necessary beacons of light in an often bleak world.
Dahl and Steven Spielberg should thus be a match made in heaven, as ET, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and even, to a lesser degree, Hook tapped into the deep fears children have when the supposedly protective authority figures in their lives turn out to be the enemy. However, Spielberg focuses on the easy, breezy and beautiful in his adaptation of The BFG, resulting in a pleasant film that fails to pack a punch.
Mark Rylance’s open, empathetic face is transformed into a glorious motion-capture rendering of the 24-foot vegetarian giant, who takes 10-year-old orphan Sophie (newcomer Ruby Barnhill) into giant country, where his much larger and carnivorous peers Bloodbottler (voiced by Bill Hader) and Fleshlumpeater (Jemaine Clement) love gobbling up children. Together, the BFG and Sophie conspire to use the power of dreams to inform the Queen (Penelope Wilton) of the giants’ “cannybull” tendencies, and put a stop to it.
Rylance’s performance is tender and joyful, and watching his BFG and Sophie connect over their whimsy-fuelled adventures and desire for family – complete with Dahl’s irresistible giant lingo (“How wondercrump! “How whoopsey-splunkers!”) – is a warm delight. But Spielberg fails to underscore the loneliness and terror that not only make the central friendship all the more poignant, but marks these characters as survivors, rather than adventure tourists. It’s nice schmaltz, when it should have been both bloodcurdling and delumptious.

The BFG is in cinemas now.