Movie Review - The BFG (2016)

Roald Dahl's books are beloved by many while the films based on his books have had more of a mixed reception. Some have been great like Matilda, James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (I'm more in favour of the new rather than the old as its more faithful to the source material while the old was just to advertise real chocolate despite being beloved by many). While others which I dare not name as they are not very well known, have not. Today we get The BFG, a film based on a book that has been adapted to film before, but never made it to mainstream until now. Some of you might think that this being a Disney film, it would be distributed worldwide by them. Well that's not true at all. Disney are distributing it globally, but for other areas. its eOne for us UK folk and Reliance Enertainment for India just to name a couple. With legendary film maker Steven Spielberg at the helm, you know its going to be good. So let's jump in:

So our story focuses on a girl called Sophie (played by British child actor Ruby Barnhill) who is an orphan and hates the orphanage that she is in. One night, she comes across a giant who takes her to a place called Giant Country. There the giant (later dubbed by Sophie the BFG, played through motion capture by Mark Rylance) explains to her that he took her because he can't let the existence of giants be known to the public and that she must stay with him for the rest of her life to prevent such a thing. To demonstrate on why running away is bad, the BFG gives Sophie a nightmare where she is eaten by another giant. As both characters learn from one another, it soon becomes apparent that the other giants hate and mock the BFG and will no doubt eat Sophie should she show herself to them. So Sophie must now come up with a plan to stop them, which may lead to getting some help from a particular person of royalty.

I haven't seen the first adaptation so I can't really review both at the same time. But having read the book, I think this is probably one of the only films based on a book from Dahl that is faithful, incredibly accurate and very light hearted. It's pretty much what I expected from Steven Speilberg. A great film and one of the best films based on a Dahl book that I have seen so far. 9/10