The World Is More Giant Than You Can Imagine...

A young girl living in an orphanage encounters a larger than life being who is considered an outcast by the others of his kind. Together they go on an adventure that will lead them to a future which may allow each to forget the nightmares of their past.

Sophie is an orphan who is set in the routines of her orphanage, but when she meets BFG she learns of a world outside of her own and musters up the courage to make dreams a reality. BFG is the Big Friendly Giant who is the elderly runt of his towering species and befriends Sophie due to the fact that he does not eat children like the other giants do. Queen Elizabth II is the reigning Queen of England at the time and is instrumental in a plan Sophie cooks up with the help of BFG to save him from the bullying he is receiving from the other giants. Fleshlumpeater is the biggest of the man-eating giants and the main source of BFG’s problems because he chooses to harass him with the other giants for being different.

The BFG has all the hallmarks of a classic Spielberg, from the screenplay by Melissa Mathison, to the cinematography by Janusz Kaminski to the score by John Willams, but it lacks the timelessness of the best Spielbergian efforts. I have never read the Roald Dahl book that this movie is based on, but I have watched the 1982 animated movie that was also adapted from it and I found that one to be more entertaining.

Mark Rylance and Ruby Barnhill do a stellar job as the BFG, and Sophie respectively, but the magic spell the film tries to cast is weakened by the fact that it feels like a copy of an older film or franchise like Hook or Doctor Who. There is also the chance that this film may just be one of those special movies that you must see as a child for it to capture your imagination, or I have lost the child-like wonder to let the spark it creates grow into a flame.

I rate this movie a 3 out of 5.


Rouén Robinson has been an avid moviegoer since childhood and has been critiquing motion pictures for almost a decade. He has been a film critic for The Cinemas on Tempo and was a judge for F LIFF On Location: Grand Bahama Island, an off shoot of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF). Rouén lives in Grand Bahama and can be reached at redr1976@icloud.com and on Twitter @thereelrouen