I's not having the foggiest idea in the world.

The BFG

(2016)

(SPOILERS) Big Friendly Giant? Big Fucking Git? Baggy Flaccid Grind, more like. I can only account for the generally positive critical reception to The BFG being down to the Hollywood royalty status reserved for Steven Spielberg these days. Audiences weren’t going to buy a lame duck, though, which is why it rightly bombed. This is the director’s weakest picture since Hook, and while it isn’t an outright disaster the way that sorry spectacle is (Dustin Hoffman honorably excepted), it suggests, ironically, that the mastermind behind one of the most successful kids’ movies ever (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, in case you were wondering) comes a cropper when he expressly attempts to chase that audience. The BFG is dramatically inert and comedically inept (the latter never the director’s strong point when he’s trying too hard for it, as he is here) and visually unappetising. Perhaps it’s time for the ‘berg, just turned 70, to bow out gracefully? Or accept that he no longer has it when it comes to filling multiplexes.

The tester will be his next, Ready Player One, which unwisely finds him diving into the ‘80s nostalgia he was a key figure in fashioning the landscape for, which smacks of playing with fire. But, in the post-mortem on The BFG, you can readily point to a giant’s fist of reasons for its failure. Expanding a slender tale to a two-hour movie is probably top of the list, particularly since there’s minimal drama, wonder or awe to fill the void.

Then there are the effects, which I suppose give the reliable Mark Rylance a passing resemblance to Quentin Blake’s original artwork, but entirely fail to convince that they’re anything other than motion captured, CG renderings (but then, only a bloody ijit would think it made sense to try to give Blake’s art a “realistic” rendering). On top of which, we have the inevitable Janusz Kaminski cinematography; the odd vista aside, his clinician’s approach feels entirely inappropriate to the warm, inviting hues one would expect of a family movie. You can feel him longing to get back to East Berlin. As for John Williams’ score, dragging the poor guy out of retirement for Star Wars and Spielfests isn’t doing his legacy any favours; he’s clearly all out of ideas and inspiration.

Having tepidly navigated the dubious waters of a larger-than-life, silvery-haired protagonist with a peculiar inflection who engages in child abduction (and who makes fast friends with royalty) without alluding to ‘70s BBC TV presenters (but it’s alright, this is set in the ‘80s… oh, wait….), Spielberg settles into a story that…. doesn’t go anywhere. Slowly. Not helping matters is that, while Rylance is fine, if uncommanding, Ruby Barnhill is never in danger of lighting up the screen in the crucial role of young lead Sophie. The problems are mainly director-based, though, as the ‘berg fails to instil even a modicum of momentum into a meandering and unengaged story (perhaps, given it was Melissa Mathison’s final work, he was reluctant to prune it).

There are encounters with other giants (Jermaine Clement is on good vocal form as Fleshlumpeater, but alas there’s scant mirth for him to dig into; he ought to have been given a long leash to improvise) and dream spreading (like everything else here, they are sadly literal and unmagical). There’s also farting (far too CG and not nearly naughty enough, if you’ll pardon the far too likely), and you can practically smell the ‘berg’s embarrassment over it. We also encounter Penelope Wilton’s Queen, oddly not portrayed as a cannibalistic lizard (or she’d no doubt join forces with the bad giants), who farts less than regally (a pair of corgis blowing off and express training across the palace floor did raise a smile, but that was about the only incident that did) and whom the BFG, the Ed Snowden of his kind, betrays the other giants to.

Spielberg never gets the tone right, or the visuals. The BFG is never whimsical or playful enough, bouncy enough, spirited enough, anarchic enough or dark enough, funny enough, and all far too (if you’ll pardon the far too) literal to embrace Dahl’s flight of fantasy and benign/warped silliness; one quickly comes to the conclusion that live-action wasn’t the way to go, but I think, more to the point, tired old Steven wasn’t the guy to make The BFG, unless Disney (for whom it’s his first picture; someone won’t be asked back) wanted something to send kids into actual dream land 10 minutes in.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

He’s probably paranoid, high-strung, doesn’t like daylight. You know, has a lot of crumbs in his beard, if he has a beard.

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) (SPOILERS) I’d like to report I had a blast with Godzilla vs. Kong . It’s lighter on its oversized, city-stomping feet than its slog of a MonsterVerse predecessor, Godzilla: King of the Monsters , and there are flashes of visual inspiration along with several engaging core ideas (which, to be fair, the series had already laid the seeds for). But this sequel still stumbles in its chief task: assembling an engaging, lively story that successfully integrates both tiny humans and towering titans.

You stink, my friend.

Mulan (2020) (SPOILERS) Let that be a lesson to Disney. It’s a fool’s errand to try and beat the Chinese at their own game, no matter how painstakingly respectful – or rather, pandering – you are. Indeed, Mulan ’s abysmal $40m box office take in the country – where it did get a proper release, so no plandemic excuses can be cited – feels like a direct rebuke; don’t try and tell us how to suck eggs. There’s an additional explanation too, of course. That Mulan sucks.

It's Dark Age, by Jupiter!

The Dig (2021) (SPOILERS) An account of the greatest archaeological find Britain would know until Professor Horner opened the barrow at Devil’s End. And should you scoff at such “ fiction ”, that’s nothing on this adaptation of John Preston’s 2007 novel concerning the Sutton Hoo excavations of the late 1930s. The Dig , as is the onus of any compelling fictional account, takes liberties with the source material, but the erring from the straight and narrow in this case is less an issue than the shift in focus from characters and elements successfully established during the first hour.

Roswell was a smokescreen, we've had a half a dozen better salvage operations.

The X-Files 1.24: The Erlenmeyer Flask The Erlenmeyer Flask makes for a fast-paced, tense and eventful ride, but does it make any sense? That less than mattered at the time, but revisiting the mythology arc (for probably the fourth or fifth time) reveals increasingly tenuous internal coherence as the various conspiracy elements begin to pile up and the situations become ever-more convoluted. This will become the Chris Carter’s signature: don’t examine the details too closely, go with the flow. Trust Chris implicitly.

UFO IN MOSSINGHAM?

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2020) (SPOILERS) One might reasonably suggest the recourse of the ailing or desperate franchise is to resort, seemingly out of nowhere, to space aliens. Even Police Academy didn’t go that far (to Moscow, yes, but not to space). Perhaps animators think kids have no skills of discernment and will swallow any old sugar-coated crap. Perhaps they don’t, and they will. Ice Age had been enjoying absurd success until Collision Course sent Scrat spinning into the cosmos and grosses tumbled. Shaun the Sheep has been around for a quarter of a century, but this is only his second movie outing and already he’s pulling an E.T. on us. Of course, this may all be part of the grand scheme, and Nick Park is simply doing his bit to familiarise the tots in time for Project Blue Beam.

Careful how much boat you’re eating.

Onward (2020) (SPOILERS) Pixar’s Bright , or thereabouts. The interesting thing – perhaps the only interesting thing – about Onward is that it’s almost indiscernible from a DreamWorks Animation effort, where once they cocked a snook at such cheap-seats fare, seeing themselves as better class of animation house altogether. Just about everything in Onward is shamelessly derivative, from the Harry Potter /fantasy genre cash-in to the use of the standard Pixar formula whereby any scenario remotely eccentric or exotic is buried beneath the banal signifiers of modern society: because anything you can imagine must be dragged down to tangible everyday reference points or kids won’t be able to assimilate it. And then there’s the choice of lead voices, in-Disney star-slaves Chris Pratt and Tom Holland.

Our "Bullshit!" team has unearthed spectacular new evidence, which suggests, that Jack the Ripper was, in fact, the Loch Ness Monster.

Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) Cheeseburger Film Sandwich . Apparently, that’s what the French call Amazon Women on the Moon . Except that it probably sounds a little more elegant, since they’d be saying it in French (I hope so, anyway). Given the title, it should be no surprise that it is regarded as a sequel to Kentucky Fried Movie . Which, in some respects, it is. John Landis originally planned to direct the whole of Amazon Women himself, but brought in other directors due to scheduling issues. The finished film is as much of a mess as Kentucky Fried Movie , arrayed with more miss sketches than hit ones, although it’s decidedly less crude and haphazard than the earlier picture. Some have attempted to reclaim Amazon Women as a dazzling satire on TV’s takeover of our lives, but that’s stretching it. There is a fair bit of satire in there, but the filmmakers were just trying to be funny; there’s no polemic or express commentary. But even on such moderate t

By heaven, I’d thrash the life out of you… if I didn’t have to read the Nine O’Clock News.

The Green Man (1956) (SPOILERS) The Green movie from Launder and Gilliat starring Alastair Sim that isn’t Green for Danger. Which is to say, The Green Man can’t quite scale the heady heights of that decade-earlier murder mystery triumph, but neither is it any slouch. Sim is the antagonist this time – albeit a very affable, Sim-ish one – and his sometime protégée, a young George Cole, the hero. If the plot is entirely absurd, Robert Day’s movie wastes no time probing such insufficiencies, ensuring it is very funny, lively and beautifully performed.

Well, I’ll be damned. It’s the gentleman guppy.

Waterworld (1995) (SPOILERS) The production and budgetary woes of “ Kevin’s Gate ” will forever overshadow the movie’s content (and while it may have been the most expensive movie ever to that point – adjusted for inflation, it seems only Cleopatra came close – it has since turned a profit). However, should you somehow manage to avoid the distraction of those legendary problems, the real qualitative concerns are sure to come sailing over the cognitive horizon eventually; Waterworld is just so damned derivative. It’s a seafaring Mad Max. Peter Rader, who first came up with the idea in 1986, admitted as much. David Twohy, who later came aboard, also cited Mad Max 2 ; that kind of rip-off aspect – Jaws birthing Piranha – makes it unsurprising Waterworld was once under consideration by Roger Corman (he couldn’t cost it cheaply enough). Ultimately, there’s never a sufficient sense the movie has managed to become its own thing. Which is a bummer, because it’s frequently quite good fun.

Wow. Asteroids are made of farts. Okay. I got it.

Greenland (2020) (SPOILERS) Global terror porn for overpopulation adherents as Gerard Butler and his family do their darnedest to reach the safety of a bunker in the titular country in the face of an imminent comet impact. Basically, what if 2012 were played straight? These things come to test cinemas in cycles, of course. Sean Connery struggled with a duff rug and a stack of mud in Meteor , while Deep Impact plumbed for another dread comet and Armageddon an asteroid. The former, owing to the combined forces of Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin, was a – relatively – more meditative fare. The latter was directed by Michael Bay. And then there’s Roland Emmerich, who having hoisted a big freeze on us in The Day After Tomorrow then wreaked a relatively original source of devastation in the form of 2012 ’s overheating Earth’s core. Greenland , meanwhile, is pretty much what you’d expect from the director of Angel Has Fallen .

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog