At theaters in Lanesboro, North Adams and Pittsfield.
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Is there any director in Hollywood with more street cred than Steven Spielberg? We’re well within uncanny valley territory here, so that just when you settle down and accept the visuals as being as “real” as the actors they’re playing against something odd (and perhaps subconscious) happens on the visual or performance level and we’re jostled out to be reminded of the fakery. What makes one special just as often makes one a target. It’s also the reason why the under-10 set flocks to Dahl. This is in keeping with Dahl’s original book dedication to his young daughter who had died 20 years before he wrote the book in 1982.
If you liked Matilda orJames and the Giant Peach, you will like this. It’s an honest-to-goodness, gut punch of a journey, crackling with heart, uncertainty, and overflowing with all-out wonder. Most giants eat people, but the BFG spends his days collecting pleasant dreams and giving them to children at night. Sporting a Dorothy Hamill haircut and rounded glasses, this little brunette moppet is a delightful revelation who is at turns feisty, lovable and even a little annoying (in a good way). Steven Spielberg’s E.T. was a movie that resonated with me back in the day.
So, while there is a sweet tale of friendship and a moral of accepting others despite – or maybe even because of – their differences from you, and Mark Rylance gives a wonderful performance as the title character, Spielberg and his screenwriter, Melissa Mathison, who passed away previous year, fail to give the story any dramatic urgency.
We see this giant world from Sophie’s point of view, and the 3d really helps to create a huge field of vision, scary to Sophie and the viewer alike as we contemplate just how she could escape this place.
The giants can be scary for the kiddos and admittedly both of mine either covered their eyes or buried their face into my chest on one or two occasions, but it never got to be too much.
One noticeable facet of The BFG’s persona is his brandished way of talking, which has been kept unintelligible throughout the movie, and true to Dahl’s book.
Ruby Barnhill and Mark Rylance in The BFG. Thankfully, it somehow stays clear of the uncanny valley. His direction feels reckless, and that hurts the emotional impact of the film.
There are certain limitations to the form that hinder the full range of a Rylance performance, but what’s here is sufficient, even when he’s flatulent – sorry, whizzpopping – or working his way through Dahl’s twisty language.
This is a guy who had velociraptors figure out how to open a door so they could stalk children around a kitchen for five minutes straight, so for a movie featuring 9 children-eating monsters to feel so, again, soft, has gotta have something behind it. Not to mention the fact that a significant portion of this sequence is devoted to whizzpoppers.
There’s a melancholy hanging over the film, too – that it’s Mathison’s final screenwriting credit. Mathison, a former wife of Harrison Ford, died last November after battling cancer.
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The BFG is directed by Steven Spielberg, an industry legend who needs no introduction.
