3 stars (out of 5)
Roald Dahl’s 1982 children’s book has been filmed before (for English TV in 1989), but here it gets the modern 3D FX treatment under the guidance of director/producer Steven Spielberg, working from an adapted script penned by ‘Our Melissa’ (a.k.a. Melissa Mathison, Spielberg’s regular collaborator and writer of E.T., who died last November).
Insomniac London orphan Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) is observed creeping about late at night (there’s no subplot here about the nasty Mrs. Clonkers abusing her, which is the first PC touch), and when she spies a giant sneaking about outside the FX creation plucks her from her bed and spirits her away to Giant Country. It transpires that BFG (a.k.a. Big Friendly Giant, and voiced by Mark Rylance, Oscar-winner for Spielberg’s Bridge Of Spies) is a kindly dream-catcher, and while his speech impediment has been cut out here (another PC change), he does have lots of trouble with language, which unfortunately never seems quite as funny as it should be.
But that doesn’t matter once the other giants get a whiff of BFG’s ‘human bean’, and they turn out to be far bigger (BFG is the runt), meaner and uglier, and their ostensible leader, Fleshlumpeater, is voiced and ‘played’ by Jemaine Clement, who revels in the grisly Englishness of it all. Sophie is shocked at the way they bully BFG, and circumstances lead to a famous final act which involves a would-be Buckingham Palace and a Queen (Penelope Wilton) who isn’t embarrassed by a bit of ‘whizpopping’.
Rugrats will surely enjoy the bad giants and the green-fart jokes here, but there is something oddly missing, and maybe Spielberg and Mathison shouldn’t have chopped the dubious, now-politically-incorrect elements out. After all, what is a Roald Dahl kiddie story without the child abuse, the racism, the ageism, the misogyny and all that cruelty and crudity? Hmmmm?
I Wake Up Screening 