Movie Review The BFG

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2016 – spoiler alerts This is the second time Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s tale of The Big Friendly Giant has been filmed. A 1982 TV animation, starring David Jason was released soon after the book came out, and I prefer that version though the new take on it is still quite beautiful. A young orphan, Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), is stuck in a London orphanage, and supposedly cruelly treated though we see nothing of the staff and other children only when they sleep. Sophie has insomnia and intense curiosity so she is awake when the BFG makes his rounds blowing dreams into people’s heads in the night. Realizing that he has been seen, the BFG abducts Sophie because he fears she might tell people he exists and get him caught or arrested. He plans on keeping Sophie in his Giant Land cottage for the rest of her life. He is no threat to her though, and he tries to make her life comfortable and happy. Alas, other, bigger giants just want to eat Sophie, who learns that they have been abducting children round the World. She hatches a plan to save the day. She persuades the BFG (played beautifully by Mark Rylance) to go to Buckingham Palace to get help from the Queen. The Queen, (the actual Queen Elizabeth 2nd played unconvincingly by a badly CGI’d and voiced and normally brilliant Penelope Wilton) agrees to help, and sends the army and air force to help capture the evil giants. The scenes of the BFG being entertained at Buckingham Palace, his dream tree, and general landscaping of the film are exquisite. The film lacks dramatic tension though. The raid on the bad giants goes ridiculously easy. Stephen Spielberg sets the story in 1982,presumably avoiding having the Queen calling Trump for support, and giving homage to the Reagan era setting of the original animation and novel. The book’s darker aspects are clearly diluted here, but the end result is quite sweet. Arthur Chappell