The BFG (2016)

The BFG (2016)

6/10

Starring

Mark Rylance

Ruby Barnhill

Directed by Steven Spielberg

The Big Friendly Giant (BFG for short) was, not surprisingly, a good film—and also not surprisingly, it flopped at the box office. From what I’ve heard, the movie will be Steven Spielberg’s biggest flop. But Disney has had a good run this year with Captain America: Civil War (2016), Finding Dory (2016), Zootopia (2016) and Jungle Book (2016), so I don’t expect this to affect their profits.
The movie had great CGI, and the acting of the child actor Ruby Barnhill was masterful. The cinematography and CGI-to-live-action mix are worth noting—it was well done.

The issue is the story. The plot isn’t bad, but it’s definitely not a crowd-puller. I’m just seeing the movie now since its release in July, and to be honest, if I’d missed it, I wouldn’t have felt it.
When it comes to the directing and the masterful cinematography, I have to say Steven is still as good as expected. He and his team took an old-time story with its animation and turned it into a comedy-adventure film for the family.

The moment the movie started and I sat down to see what it was about, I didn’t move from where I was until the credits started rolling. Another downer in the movie is the ending, when the humans had to face off against the giants. That last act was a complete anticlimax to an otherwise good movie.
I totally expected more from the movie, but it seems Spielberg was focused on making a family-friendly film that any child could watch.

That alone is the reason why many of the things you’d expect from cannibalistic, human-eating giants were totally absent from this movie. Even though they wanted to keep it family-friendly, I believe the ending could still have been fun if the giants were allowed to put up a little fight to save their hides instead of the walkover we had the not-so-good pleasure of seeing.

The movie plot shows two worlds: the world of the giants and that of humans. The giants eat humans if they can, except for one who happens to be more of a vegan. He’s a dreamcatcher and a dream blower. While giving humans dreams as they sleep, he’s spotted by a little girl named Sophie (Ruby Barnhill). Afraid that she’ll tell people, he takes her from her bed to the giant world.
There, they become friends and decide to work together to stop the other giants.

A good family movie for kids, but it won’t be much fun for adults.