Spielberg’s film of Roald Dahl’s creepy children’s story The BFG, adapted by the late Melissa Mathison (who also wrote E.T. the
That soon dissipates, however. Spielberg’s film is quite faithful to Dahl’s original: The giant whisks the girl off to a magic land, where she discovers that he’s the sole friendly member of a whole race of giants — a kind and melancholy soul at the mercy of his bigger, man-eating brethren. Those who adore Dahl’s story and are horrified at the idea of anyone changing a word of it may well enjoy this heartfelt, respectful version. And there are certainly touching moments here and there: Rylance, who was the sad and silent soul of the director’s Bridge of Spies (and won an Oscar for it), speaks the giant’s lines in a wounded murmur that can be moving — particularly during some of his soliloquies, in which he speaks of hearing “the secret whisperings of the world.”
But much of the film suffers from the one thing that Spielberg films almost never suffer
You can sense his restlessness, too. He’s fascinated, as always, by objects — by the giant’s Rube Goldberg–like inventions and contraptions, and the creaky, brightly colored ornaments and potions in his little cave of wonders, where the film spends much of its first act. But when it comes to actual interactions between girl and giant, the energy dissipates. This is also why all those scenes with the Lost Boys fall
The film seems meant to pick up when it moves on to Buckingham Palace and to an audience with the Queen, where we get some laughs — particularly in a set piece involving the giant having breakfast with the queen’s retinue, a scene punctuated by a series of massive farts (all straight out of Dahl). But Spielberg is an expert at offhand humor — throwaway lines, background slapstick, deadpan undercutting of suspense — and he’s on unsure footing with big comic sequences. He treats them like action scenes: They’re all buildup,