The BFG 2016 Review

Disney fans there are a lot of films from the company that I straight up haven't seen and well i'm crossing one of them of my list today. The strangest thing is when this film was coming out I was actually planning to go and see it but it just slipped past me and i've not heard anyone else talking about this film since it first came out and so here is my review of the live action adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic The BFG.

The plot of the film is Sophie a young orphan from London is kidnapped by a friendly giant and the two form a bond but there are other giants out there who want to kid eaten and it's up to the two of them to put a stop to it once and for all. In terms of actual plot the film doesn't really do that well since the plot is pretty weak at best with a lot of scenes not adding anything to the story but at the same time the story is fairly well told.

Starring in the film is Sir Mark Rylance as The BFG , Ruby Barnhill as Sophie , Penelope Wilton as Queen Elizabeth II , Jemaine Clement as Jemaine Clement as The Fleshlumpeater , Rebecca Hall as Mary , Rafe Spall as Mr. Tibbs , Bill Hader as The Bloodbottler , Michael Adamthwaite as The Butcher Boy , Daniel Bacon as The Bonecruncher , Chris Gibbs as The Gizzardgulper , Adam Godley as The Manhugger , Paul Moniz de Sa as The Meatdripper , Jonathan Holmes as The Childchewer and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as The Maidmasher.

The acting in the film was honestly really freaking good i'm not going to lie and say that every actor was great. However the ones that are good really do stand out with perhaps the best performer easily being Mark Rylance who is simply a joy to watch and he is easily the best performer in the whole film in my opinion and that's saying something when the rest of the cast is made up of really good actors it's just a shame that Ruby Barnhill isn't that good in this i've had the pleasure of hearing her in Mary And The Witch's Flower and while she is better in this film she still comes across as a piece of wood.

Doing the CGI effects for the film is Weta Digital and so it wouldn't shock you to learn the effects in this film are truly amazing. Every giant in this film look truly great hell there's not a bad looking effect in the film that's how good the CGI is in this film and I love that they used motion capture for all of the giants to me that makes the effect feel more real if that makes any kind of sense heck I even think they did giants country in CGI but i'm not exactly sure on that.

I can easily see why the film flopped at the box office because it is really forgettable and that's something that the original book never was not to me nor the people who grew up reading it. So it saddens me to say that the live action version of the film is forgettable if anything this version of the story should be memorable because of the fact it's based of a really good and i'd go as far to say classic book but there's no real effort thrown into making it as memorable as the book is.

Now for those that don't know there was an animated version of the story released in 1989 and to many myself included that version is the ultimate version of the story. So much so that when Disney first announced they were making a live action version of the story I couldn't help but wonder why since there's already a well known film version out there and that film is actually thirty minuets shorter then this film despite it telling the same story.

Which brings me on to the point that this film is nearly two hours long when it really didn't need to be if anything it should have been nearer an hour and a half. However tho to the film's credit if it was an hour and a half then the friendship between The BFG and Sophie which is an important part of the story and this film does include a lot of scenes that develop that friendship to the point where you believe Sophie when she says The BFG is her best friend.

Sadly tho the film doesn't take anytime in developing the actual villains of the story which is something that really annoyed me. It annoyed me because they all had great looks to them and i wanted to spend more time with them but the film is more focused on developing the friendship between the two main characters that it's not really bothered about developing the villains of the story hell the only thing we find out about them is that they want to eat Sophie and that's it that's all we know about them we don't know why they want to eat just that they want to eat which isn't enough to make them interesting.

Now I did some digging around and I found that that to date this is the only film that director Steven Spielberg has made for Walt Disney. He did develop Hook at Disney at first but that then moved to Tri-Star Pictures so he has worked at Disney but he's never directed a film for them and i'm honestly shocked that it took them this long to sign him up given how good of a director the man still is if I was Disney i'd be getting him to direct films at every possible chance hell i'd even try to get him to direct a live action remake just because it would then lend those films some credibility.

What I don't get is that for his introductory they chose to make The BFG appear scary even tho everyone watching this film knows that BFG stands for Big FRIENDLY Giant. So it makes that whole sequence pointless because the audience isn't going to be scared because they know the outcome and who the character is and it's honestly one of the things that could have worked if they made a few changes like if they made Sophie a curious kid and it's through that curiosity that we get to see him for the first time.

Overall I can see why not alot of people talk about this film because it is pretty bad but at the same time it is still the same tale that alot of kids grew up with just told differently. It might also not get talked about that much because not alot of people saw the film with the film actually flopping big time at the box office making only one hundred and eighty million dollars against a hundred forty million dollar budget and so if you factor in marketing costs the film would have had to have made at least $200 million dollars just to break even and so the film gets a 6.5 out of 10 from me.