The BFG
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton, Rebecca Hall
Four stars
It seems apt that British author Roald Dahl published his children's classic The BFG in 1982 – the same year director Steven Spielberg released his equally revered film, ET The Extra-Terrestrial.
They feel like thematic cousins – Spielberg's film tells the story of a young boy and the alien visitor he befriends, while The BFG is about an orphan called Sophie who forms a friendship with the 25-foot-tall Big Friendly Giant.
Now Spielberg gives us his big-screen adaptation of Dahl's story, from a script by ET writer Melissa Mathieson (who died of cancer last November), further strengthening the spiritual connection between the films.
British newcomer Ruby Barnhill is a delight as Sophie, who lives in a sort of Dickensian-style orphanage in modern-day London but is spirited away to Giant Country when the BFG snatches her from her dorm. There she discovers he’s not going to eat her – he is a vegetarian and prefers munching on foul-smelling snozzcumbers – but is clearly in need of a friend.
Playing the BFG, with a little help from motion-capture technology, is Mark Rylance. The British actor won an Oscar this year for his performance as Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in Spielberg's previous movie, the Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies, and he is just as soulful here as he was in that film.
Despite the digital makeover, and the character’s mumbling and deliberately muddled diction, Rylance shines once again as a loner, bullied by his fellow giants (led by Flight of the Conchords star Jemaine Clement). Think of him as an enormous ET without the glowing finger.
Some parts of the film sag, notably when Sophie discovers the BFG’s occupation as resident dream catcher – but the final act, in particular, has a Dahl-like cheekiness to it, as Sophie and the BFG return on a mission to London to petition Queen Elizabeth II (Penelope Wilton) to help defend the nation against the BFG’s marauding fellow giants.
This may be the one and only time you’ll see England’s long-serving monarch portrayed on screen with a flatulence problem (as a result of one of the BFG’s gunky potions).
At his most irreverent – and clearly the perfect choice to take on Dahl – Spielberg seems to be having a ball, even if a few incongruous references (a modern-day Westminster Bridge, a Buckingham Palace that seems very 1982) jar somewhat.
While it may not be on the same tear-jerking level as ET, there is certainly enough here to keep children and adults alike suitably amused. A tremendously silly but loveable teatime tale, Dahl (who died in 1990) would most definitely approve.
artslife@thenational.ae