Review of The BFG (2016) by Cole J — 07 Jul 2016

It feels like it's breezing though elements of the plot like a summary of the novel. Roald Dahl's world is so imaginative, but this adaptation is strangely passionless, showing you the cool stuff from the book but not with the same wonder or joy. How the hell did Steven Spielberg the writer of ET, John Williams, and Janusz Kaminski (the cinematographer) not deliver?

On the surface, all the ingredients are there. The visuals are interesting and luscious, but they somehow don't immerse the audience or pull them into the world the way Spielberg's most awe inspiring films have.

While the CGI is cool sometimes, it's kind of waxy, and if they didn't make every single thing that could possibly be a visual effect a visual effect, it might have been a more wondrous experience.

While Janusz Kaminski is a fantastic cinematographer, this may not be his kind of movie. It is not entirely a coincidence that he has not shot any of Spielberg's great family films, and that he has done all his political shit. The BFG is pretty mundane throughout. There's a serious lack of wonder all over this movie, and although there's clearly a ton of effort in the visual craft, it doesn't get the job done.

The screenplay is basic af. There's hardly an interesting line in the entire film, since most of the dialogue is exposition or designed to advance the plot. There's a surprising lack of character development and heart in a story that has so much potential for that.

The casting is perfect and the actors do a great job, even though they're given nothing interesting to work with in. Mark Rylance is perfect as the giant, simple minded but good hearted. The voice and speech is exactly as one might imagine the character to be from the book. Ruby Barnhill is also just as one might imagine from the book as Sophie. The chemistry between the actors is good as well, even when you can tell that Sophie is in front of a green screen. Jemaine Clement was also surprisingly memorable as the "main" giant because of the comedic tone he brought to the character.

I thought I was enjoying this movie for a while. My instinct was telling me that the visuals were good, but my heart was totally silent. There's so little wonder, joy, passion, or emotion, it's surprising. Sometimes the movie looks cool and sometimes it's imaginative, but it's hard to rejoice in that imagination the way I wanted to, and sometimes it's hard to tell why. What's clear is that the Spielberg magic is not there.

Towards the end, the movie gets pretty tedious. Their decision to go visit the queen seems so odd, even when it felt like it made perfect sense in the book. That's the case with a lot of the plot. It made so much sense in the book, but in this movie, things are happening because they have to because they're in the book, not because they're unfolding organically.

There was a whole 15 minute scene where the guards set up a giant table for the BFG and then he eats a lot of small food, and it's just a total waste of a scene, and after a while I was thinking to myself, "What the fuck even is this?".

And it was then that I realized that there's nothing in the movie I cared about to keep watching, and it went on for another 30 minutes, continuing its trend of empty scene after empty scene.

Some impressive spectacles aren't enough to evoke wonder. There needs to be heart for the visuals to burst through the screen the way they wanted to, and that was sorely lacking.