Review of The BFG (2016) by Chad P — 13 Apr 2017

I hate to start out with this, but I almost feel like I have to. A person I follow on Twitter, whose handle shall remain nameless, once said that his controversial opinions only involve films. He then said that he thought Christopher Nolan was a scrub, which I disagree with, but he's more than entitled to believe that.

One of his other controversial opinions was that he felt that Spielberg's film were sentimental tripe. This was a month or so ago, so I'm paraphrasing, but that's the essence of his tweets.

And this one, this one I really got a bit angered with. To the point that I actually muted him on Twitter for a while. Because this is demonstrably false. When you have a career as long and as prolific as Spielberg's you end up making every type of movie under the sun.

It's the type of ignorant statement that's the equivalent of saying that Scorsese has only made gangster movies. Let's just look at a few of the movies in Spielberg's filmography: Jaws, Close Encounters, ET (the film that I'm assuming inspired the tweet), 1941, the Indiana Jones franchise (all o them), The Color Purple, Jurassic Park (and its first sequel), Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, Munich, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies and, of course, The BFG (the film that brings us together now).

There are many others on that list, but that's just some of them. The fact of the matter is that to sum up an entire career, that covers FIVE decades, to just one style of film is ignorant and neglectful of Spielberg's contributions to the world of films.

Say what you will about the guy, and criticize his movies, which I implore you to do as that leads to interesting conversations between film geeks, but don't say something as ignorant as suggestig that every film in his repertoire is exactly the same and covers the same theme.

I really hate that that took up so much of this review, but I really had to say that. I digress, let's move on to this movie, which is what really matters. Yet another live-action Disney movie that tries to sell you on the bond that is built between a little kid and fantastical creature.

First it was The Jungle Book with Mowgli and his bond with Baloo and Bagheera. Then there was Pete's Dragon with Pete and his, well, dragon. And then there's this movie with Sophie and the eponymous BFG (Big Friendly Giant).

You can bet people switched out Friendly for another F-word. As far as the three movies are concerned, which one does the best job at creating the emotional bond between its leads? Honestly, I thought the Jungle Book, almost by a country mile, was the weakest of the three movies.

While I gave it three stars, it's a movie that I did not like for the most part. Objectively speaking, it had more good than bad, but I didn't enjoy it that much nor did I buy into the bond. That leaves Pete's Dragon and this one.

I'd say that Pete's Dragon did a better job by this one (though not by much) simply because of the fact that Pete was raised by the dragon and their connection went deeper than just being best friends.

I think the BFG doesn't come close to that, but that's not to say that the connection between Sophie and the BFG isn't there, because it is. But it is missing something that I felt Pete's Dragon had.

With that said, however, this is still a good movie. It doesn't really surprise me that they went with a more family-friendly approach to Roald Dahl's darker novel. It's a movie that was co-financed by Disney, so you better fucking know that they'll want the film as family-friendly as humanly possible.

Which I understand, the film cost a lot of money to make and they wanted to recoup as much of that money as possible. But I just wish the film contained some of the darker elements of the novel. I've, personally, never read it and I wish I would have gotten a sense of the darker elements.

Like, for example, the orphanage that the BFG takes Sophie away from is run by an abusive woman. You can hint at things without fully showing them, you don't have to see the kids being hit or mistreated.

But I digress, you have to review the movie as it is and not as you want it to be. The film is simple, relatively speaking. Sophie is a lonely girl without any real friends. She's taken by the BFG after she sees him.

He believes that he would tell everyone she knows about him. He then takes her to Giant Country where he lives with other giants (all of whom are bigger than him). These other giants eat human beings (or beans as the giants call them, one of the many things they mispronounce).

The BFG is bullied by the other giants and Sophie tries to teach him to stand up for himself. Eventually, things progress to the point where the bad giants are going on a hunt for humans and Sophie decides to use the BFG so they can get help from the Queen in order to stop the giants.

There's nothing about the movie that explores more complex issues. Even Sophie's loneliness is easily resolved by the BFG and the BFG's past experience with another child is only touched upon in passing.

The film is well-written, and the acting is really good. Ruby Barnhill, this is her first film, is quite good here. She's a bit rough around the edges, but she's, otherwise, very good. There's very few human actors that get any real screen time, at least until they go to the Queen of England, which features Penelope Wilton, Rafe Spall and Rebecca Hall, all of whom are very good here as well.

Mark Rylance, who voices the BFG, is excellent here. Not to mention the fact that the actual CG for the character, and all the other giants, is top-notch. The facial animations for giants, BFG in particular, are tremendous.

I don't think the CG is quite as good here as it was in Jungle Book, but it's still high quality. One of the few problems is that there were parts where, I felt, the film dragged. I thought the scenes with the Queen and Buckingham Palace added an element of surprise, not to mention new human characters, but I felt that it ground the movie to a halt.

It's not that this part of the film is bad, far from it, but it just hurt the pacing of the movie which, to that point, had been quite good. Prior to this, the BFG and Sophie never spent too much time in one location or doing just one thing.

So this Buckingham Palace is a bit of a curve ball in that regards. Again, it's not bad and the new characters are welcome additions, but I just felt that it hurt the story more than it benefited it, even though this part was essential to the narrative.

The film gets a little sentimental in its epilogue, but it's not as bad as it could have been. Not really sure what else to say about this. It's a good movie, it's got very good acting, great CG, a strong emotional bond between its leads, but the flaws are too many for me to say that this is a really good movie.

It falls just short of that. I'd still recommend it, it's not perfect, but if you want something to watch with your family, then this will do the job.