Movie Review: 'The BFG'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - He's been our BFG – our Big Filmmaking Giant -- for years.
It's not so much that he makes some of his movies for children; it's that he turns us into children while we're watching his wondrous work.
How else do you explain a glittering directorial resume that includes Jaws, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler's List, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Saving Private Ryan, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, Minority Report, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, War of the Worlds, Munich, Lincoln, and a few dozen other indelible movies.
If Spielbergian isn't already an official cinematic adjective, it ought to be.
Now taking its place on that list of accomplishments – not quite at the top but certainly ensconced in the middle -- by the 13-time Oscar nominee and three-time Oscar winner is The BFG, another collaboration between the world-class director and the late Melissa Mathison, who wrote E.T., which similarly featured the surprising friendship between a lonely child and a lonely alien.
The BFG is a marvel of a live-action family fantasy about a ten-year-old orphan, played by natural newcomer Ruby Barnhill, who lives in a London orphanage, and the 24-foot-tall giant she encounters, an outcast in his species of giants because he's much shorter than his enormous brethren and he, unlike them, just refuses to eat human boys and girls.
The titular giant is voiced and played in the motion capture process by British actor Mark Rylance, who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for director Spielberg for last year's Bridge of Spies.
Despite his intimidating appearance, this titular giant is a gentle soul and a vegetarian outcast, mocked about his kindness and treated unkindly by the other, taller giants, who call him "runt."
The mischievous Sophie, also an outcast, is somewhat of an insomniac, so she's awake when the giant comes around lurking in the street in the middle of the night.
Because he's afraid that she'll spill the beans about his existence to the other humans, he whisks her away – okay, kidnaps her – and takes her to Giant Country, the land of giants, where dreams are made. Literally.
When Sophie comes to realize that the BFG has a major role in humans' dreams – he blows dreams into their heads as they sleep at night -- what she wants to do with her enormous new friend is harvest and bottle those dreams and place them in the heads of sleeping humans.
Now, if that isn't a metaphor for storytelling and moviemaking, nothing is.
But the problem is that the other giants have other ideas.
So Sophie and the BFG need the help of the British armed forces, which means that the two bonded buddies have got to get to Buckingham Palace and convince the Queen of England (Penelope Wilton) to help them thwart the giants' intentions and bring peace to the land.
Mathison's screenplay is based on the beloved 1982 book by six-foot-six-inches-tall Roald Dahl, which was turned into an animated film in 1989 and later led to a stage play.
This version is a visual masterwork, with dazzling special effects that splendidly serve the story; a dreams-can-come-true theme that plays out organically; enormous but disciplined creativity; cleverly effective shifts in perspective; copious charm, humor, and wonder; and an ingratiating sweetness, especially in the relationship between Rylance and Barnhill, both terrific.
So we'll enlarge 3 stars out of 4. Ultimately, this enchanting children's adventure works better as a visual spectacle than as a heartwarming campfire story. But The BFG is nonetheless Brilliant and Friendly and Gigantic.
