Back in 1982, there was a little book by renowned children’s author, Roald Dahl called ‘’The BFG’’. In a long line of children’s books that Roald Dahl created, the BFG still managed to stand out, being the story of a Big Friendly Giant becoming friends with a little orphan girl, whom he shows around his world, catches dreams with her, and then go to stop evil giants from eating sleeping children by warning the Queen of England (as is common in most children’s media obviously). Like most of Dahl’s work, it was strange, inventive, surprisingly dark, and had this sense of gritty realism mixed with this sense of quiet magic that made it hypnotically engrossing. It had a soft slow pace to it that allowed for a lot of discussions between the two leads, and these talks bounced between quietly meaningful and insanely wacky to the point of sounding like the ramblings of a child, it’s a product that is uniquely odd even for Dahl and it took itself more seriously than it needed to, but still turned out something very timeless and memorable, even managing to get a British animated movie released in 1989. During 1991, talks were in play for a cinematic venture for the story and it was passed from director to director which stuck it in development hell until DreamWorks acquired the rights in 2011. Despite this, Disney were the ones who would release the movie after some distribution reworkings, and Steven Spielberg was placed on for director (with his production company, Amblin Entertainment, helping to produce the film), resulting in the film finally seeing the light of day in 2016. Awake late at night on the Witching Hour of 3:00am, 10-year-old orphan Sophie (played by Ruby Barnhill) gets more than she was expecting from a late-night when she is taken from her bed and whisked away to giant land by the non-child eating BFG (played by Mark Rylance). Stating that the reason he took her was because she saw him out on his job of delivering good dreams to children, Sophie discovers she may be here forever as just outside of the giant’s house lies much larger and much more dangerous giants who specialize in eating children. After bonding together and realizing they should stop these creatures from doing more harm, the two decide to form a plan to warn the Queen of England (played by Penelope Wilton) of the threat so that they can help take them down for good. For the first Royal Dahl movie to come out in a good long time, it doesn’t really live up to any sense of wonder it promises. Despite being enjoyed by critics and containing a few nice elements, it was a box office bomb that didn’t seem to please audiences enough to make it worth watching.

In terms of getting most of the pieces needed for this story to work, the film does manage to squeeze everything from the book into the picture thanks to the film’s two-hour running time, but it’s not like the story had a lot of plot to begin with so that isn’t what needs to be capture. Adapting a book is never easy (especially when they are as bizarre and uniquely dark as Dahl’s work), but since this story is run more by the atmosphere and the emotions of the characters rather than any sort of complex narrative or sub-plots, this movie should be able to get everything it needs into the film without it feeling overstuffed with material. While this sounds like a good start, this isn’t the problem the film is stuck with, but rather how the movie handles the material. This movie feels like it’s taking the complete opposite direction to how the book should function as a film; instead of being soft, rich in atmosphere and slow-moving, its overly goofy and annoyingly in-your-face, instead of allowing moments for characters to just sit and interact, it has constantly moving visuals and bouncy music that prevents any sense of stillness, and instead of finding a nice balance between its dark and light elements in order for both to be prominent but not overlap the other, it overcompensates the lack of its scary elements by overdosing its sweetness to an annoyingly childish angle which lacks any sense of grit. The screenplay for this film written by Melissa Mathison (who wrote films like The Black Stallion and E.T) might be able to capture the personality of the dialogue, but it never once captures the personality of the story, resulting in several scenes that never once come across as genuine or like the source material. The plot isn’t able to function because it never allows time for the audience to process what is being said and what that should mean for the characters and for the world, it feels like its constantly moving and constantly trying to pander to children believing they can’t handle subtly, almost like it has this self-awareness that believes the audience has knowledge of what’s going to happen so they aren’t letting them experience the story, but rather yank them through it in a speedy fashion. Steven Spielberg is a director that was once on top of the world in Hollywood, but he’s become a little outdated nowadays and he is definitely not the correct choice for this movie, at least in the way that he’s portraying it. Ironically in a more composed sense, he actually could’ve pulled this off as his sentimental form of storytelling mixed with his reliance on scene-building feels like a perfect match for this story, but what’s portrayed here is the sappy overly pandering side of Spielberg that isn’t always loved by many and can often ruin many sections of his mostly good movies. This combo of constant quickness with little moments of reprisal, and the forceful whimsy being injected in almost every scene without it needed to be, makes the movie both incredibly annoying and incredibly boring. The best scenes are near the end of the movie when it just lets the two leads sit and talk between each other, with no obnoxious music or dramatic camera angles getting in the way.

A lot of these glaring problems the movie has really ruin some of the characters and it really becomes a shame because of how much effort has gone into some of these performances. Both Mark Rylance and Ruby Barnhill are incredibly good actors that manage to take these pretty difficult to read lines and make them sound as convincing as possible, which is a quality that not a lot of actors can pull off without sounding ridiculous, so they deserve a lot of praise for that. They have great deliveries and could clearly work with these roles if they were led better, but the direction’s loud and unsubtle attitude not only makes a lot of their dialogue feel rushed and empty, but it also leaves the two having very little chemistry to work with and rejects the connection that is the most essential part of the movie. Most of the villainous giants are portrayed as way too comedically stupid in this movie, clearly being played up in a comedic sense to hide the dark notion of them being child eaters, but the complete reverse of tone just makes them turn into bumbling idiots and there’s no sense of character to this mindlessness, so it just feels like a poorly handled tool (they even find a way to waste Bill Hader). They aren’t threatening or funny, and even though what they do in this film is nothing short of horrific, none of this is carried into the film so all that remains is this sense of annoyance. Probably the only actor that manages to work with her lines in a way that feels most in line with the original book is Penelope Wilton as the Queen; mainly because the movie actually allows a really funny actress to just say her lines without forcing anything overly ‘’comedic’’ or dramatic into it. The tragedy of the whole situation is that every actor in this movie is clearly trying, but they aren’t being directed in the right way.

The movie’s clear problem come from the handling of its tone, but while the overly sappy direction and forceful childish elements plays a huge factor into why that’s an issue, it also comes through its overuse of computer-generated imagery. The fact that this movie has a lot of CGI in it is obviously going to be a given (its honestly hard to imagine a modern film not having so much visual work), but the blatant fakeness of every effect just makes the entire film have this fabricated sense to it that really does a bad service to it as a whole. Relying too heavy on computer effects make it more obvious to spot when they look extra fake and that’s even worse when they could have been fixed with better options. The BFG’s design doesn’t look terrible, but it also not good enough to excuse the decision they made with animating him. Anytime there’s a close up or when he’s holding Sophie, the uncanny valley on his clearly motion-captured features just can’t be ignored.  Instead of doing the much simpler trick of changing the perspective to make him look giant (Game of Thrones did that and it resulted in a fantastic effect), they went with this highly expensive trick that doesn’t look nearly as effective and just feels like a paranoid decision made by high-power executive who feel they have to flex the budget of their movie in every possible way. It’s even more noticeable with the other giants that look way faker than the BFG; their unrealistically quick motions mixed with their awful designs and stupid comedy make them even worse to be around. The environments also look way too polished and unrealistic; it just doesn’t feel the same as actually being in these places that feel magical, and since a majority of the environments don’t look that different to real life, there’s no good excuse. The camera work by Janusz Kamiński is constantly on the move, and it always feels like it has to get overly dramatic angles and swooping motion shots to distract the kids by indulging them with a lot of movement rather than create the perfect frame that would benefit the story and characters. It presents a lot of these casual scenes as so ‘’whimsical’’ that actual magical scenes don’t feel nearly as special, there’s no contrast between any scenes until they get to England where even then, so many moments are treated as so overwhelmingly magical and wacky that it just becomes too insipid.

Despite the harsh dissection, The BFG is not that awful. It doesn’t really feel like it’s being harmful or doing anything wrong, it’s just handling a lot of these elements in the wrong way that is needed to portray this story correctly. The BFG isn’t a grand story and isn’t even one of Roald Dahl’s most iconic or effective book, but it clearly has an atmosphere and tone that’s its own thing and made for an engaging read. This movie feels overly goofy, obnoxiously childish, and too fast moving, not allowing for any sense of subtle magic to take place. Other Roald Dahl movies might not be perfect, but a majority of them can at least capture the spirit of what their book were trying to get across, whereas this one doubled down a bit too heavy on that angle and feels like a distant cousin that no one wants to speak of. Decide for yourself if this movie, where the comedic highlight is corgi’s passing green rocket powered gas, is one you want to check out and see why this Big Friendly Giant may bit a little underwhelming when you actually lay eyes on him.

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