A fantasy for young and old from our greatest living director.
The BFG
Grade: A-
Director: Steven Spielberg (Jaws)
Screenplay: Melissa Mathison (E.T.) From Roald Dahl novel
Cast: Rebecca Hall (Tumbledown), Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies)
Rating: PG
Runtime: 117 min
by John DeSando
“Never get out of the bed. Never go to the window. Never look behind the curtain.” Sophie (Roby Barnhill)
Of course, she does get out of bed and in director Steven Spielberg’s and writer Roald Dahl’s worlds, she will have the time of her life with lessons aplenty. Learn she does from a Big Friendly Giant (Mark Rylance, incomparable), mostly about the efficacy of dreaming and taking the measured way to fulfill those lightning-bug like imaginative sprites.
The nine other giants on this planet are carnivores, while BFG goes around catching dreams and bottling them. After abducting Sophie from an orphanage, BFG wins her over with humility and some “squiggly” dialect called “gobblefunk.”Arguably the premiere director of our time, Spielberg coaxes a performance from Oscar-winning Rylance that captures the soul of a noble savage. Rylance alone is worth going to this adult-friendly fantasy.
Unusual for a kid’s book, the late writer Melissa Mathison of ET fame and Dahl engage the Queen of England and her army to combat the bad giants while the writers offer a not-so-surprising ending fitting for a story about dream catching. Despite some of the usual kids-movie tropes (orphans, clueless adults, things going bonkers at night, etc.), enough original ideas float around to make it delightful for pre-teens, such as a generous number of flatulent segments (even Swiss Army Man uses that bodily function to further the plot).
A giant who has heard “faraway music coming from the stars in the sky” and owns a drum made from the earring of a giant who built Stonehenge is a giant whom adults with a hint of romanticism in them could love. Bad Giants with names like Bonecrusher and Meatdripper will win the imaginations of a young audience that will love the macabre world.
My four year-old buddy, Franco, called the film “awesome.”
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
