Nothing says "a lovely film for kids" like a giant, crotchety old man in a cloak who peeks through windows and steals young orphans in the dead of the night. I don't think I'm alone in saying that The BFG was my most feared of all the Roald Dahl stories when I was growing up. Horrible oozing snozzcumbers? Aggressive spiky bad dreams that look like the personified germs in an ad for household cleaning products? It's enough to make Miss Trunchbull cry herself to sleep in the chokey.
Even after the news that Steven Spielberg was making it into a live action film, I had no doubt in my mind that it would come out a horror to rival only The Conjuring 2. At the media screening I attended, Suzy Cato's soothing voice welcoming us did nothing to allay my fears of meeting the blood-curdling Bonecruncher face-to-face. I would also like to add that I am 24 years old.
Turns out I needn't have fretted. Spielberg has handled the iconic children's story with gentle hands, creating a whimsical waft of fantasy scenes that flit about, not unlike the BFG's own collection of dream jars. Starring a post-motion capture Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall, Bridge of Spies) as the 24-foot giant and introducing Ruby Barnhill as the optimistic orphan Sophie, it's a family-friendly adventure story drenched in breath-taking beauty and technical wonder.
The BFG is visually stunning and laugh-out-loud funny at times, but lacks the beloved bite of other Dahl film adaptations. The reason his stories are so universally beloved by children everywhere is that they are a little bit naughty, sometimes a bit lewd, and incredibly, bone-crunchingly dark. That's why the 1990 adaptation of The Witches still airs almost every Halloween on TV, and why even the bravest of souls still can't bring themselves to watch the unrehearsed tunnel scene in the 1976 version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
