Movie review: The BFG overstays his welcome

Steven Spielberg's The BFG, an adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1982 children's book, is a deeply strange movie. Not strange in the way that Dahl's writing is strange, although the film lifts many passages as voiceover in addition to dialogue; Dahl wrote for children but never condescended to them. He was blacky comic, morbid, and macabre. Dahl understood children as the complex creatures that they are, and his work has rarely been filmed to its full potential.

For the first third of Spielberg's The BFG, it seems all is well. The opening follows young Sophie through her orphanage in the dead of night, which mostly allows regular Spielberg DP Janusz Kamiński and the production designers to flex: Their vision of a timeless (though we're eventually pinned to the Reagan eighties), nocturnal London has an intangible dreaminess. The union of practical sets and supporting digital effects meets in an unreal middle, like a Windsor McCay comic strip rendered in cinemagraphs. It's not unconvincing so much as it is uninterested in convincing; the film's texture is best when it's all soft blue light, the camera creeping along intricate paths through cluttered indoor spaces.

Sophie's taken by the BFG (played by Mark Rylance, beneath the CGI) in a scene that showcases the film's other intermittent strength: scale. The BFG sees Sophie at her balcony staring awestruck, as so many of Spielberg's characters do, and he crosses a block of cobblestone road with preternatural grace, extending a massive hand through curtains lit by a tremendous "moonbeam" (per Dahl) and plucking her from her bed. The focus is on Sophie throughout; even outside of explicit POV shots we're cued to her perspective.

Disney

This continues long enough to make you think the film has maybe found a visual analog to the simple clarity of Dahl's prose. As the Giant and Sophie get to know each other, their performances interact in believable, witty ways. Scenes play out not with the caffeinated, punched-up speed of a kid's movie but with attention to basic filmmaking craft. It's weird to call Spielberg underrated, household name that he is, but at this point in his career he's made a point of tackling under-the-radar projects with care. It also helps that Ruby Barnhill, playing Sophie, is a gifted actress; there's none of the painful mugging of Neel Sethi's Mowgli from this summer's The Jungle Book.

Sadly, the film descends into silliness. Following the book, the BFG and Sophie devise a plan to get the Queen's help in fighting the other Giants, who like to eat children (a proclivity the film mentions only when absolutely necessary). I guess if you don't like the slower-paced introduction, the slapstick conclusion will be a refreshing change of pace. Though a scene of the BFG being served by a determined pack of royal waiters and chefs retains the film's sense of scale, it also ends with the Queen and her corgis ripping massive farts.

This movie is also 117 minutes long. By any metric it drags; once we're acquainted with the BFG and his world, the whole "awe" thing begins to wear off. A would-be magical set piece involving a tree dripping with dreams (just go with it) falls completely flat, and the film never quite regains its footing from there. There are sparkles of wit throughout but less and less as it wears on.

Still, there is just enough in its opening stretches to make it worth watching. It briefly captures childhood as Dahl saw it, and maybe for such a singular vision that's the best we can hope for.

This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 7, 2016.