Set in a fantasy version of the 1980s in which the queen of England is more worried about child-eating giants than her country’s future economic meltdown, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book is a visually dazzling summer treat.
Working under the Disney label for the first time in his career, Spielberg offers a gallery of unforgettable images to illuminate a surprisingly straightforward story about the friendship between the Big Friendly Giant of the title and Sophie, a spunky 10-year-old orphan.
The BFG is played in a splendid motion capture-animation performance by newly minted Oscar winner Mark Rylance (of Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies”) and Sophie (in live action) by charming British newcomer Ruby Barnhill.
When Sophie spots the BFG one night on a London street, he’s so worried about being captured that he spirits Sophie from her orphanage to Giant Country. But not to worry: He’s basically a good-hearted (if eccentric) vegetarian and tinkerer looking for a friend.
Much of the film is devoted to Sophie getting to know the BFG (his animated visage modeled somewhere between the original book’s illustrations and Rylance). He speaks in an English patois of “the tellybunkum box and the radio squeakers” and manufactures dreams in his elaborately decorated cave for the benefit of human children.
But the BFG has to work hard to protect Sophie from the other denizens of Giant Country, a male-only preserve of brutes with names like Bonecruncher and Meatdripper. They’re easily twice the size of the 24-foot BFG — carnivores whose appetites are whetted when they smell Sophie in their midst.
Sophie and her friend elude them in an exciting chase sequence, but they learn the giants — led by fearsome Fleshlumpeater (Jemaine Clement) — are heading to England to feast on some young “human beans.”
The BFG and Sophie descend on Buckingham Palace, where they meet the corgi-loving queen (Penelope Wilton), who has just read the alarming news of mass child abductions. After ringing up her White House friend “Nancy” (she’s informed Nancy’s husband, “Ronnie,” is sleeping), she has her royal paratroopers deployed to deal with the problem.
Spielberg and his screenwriter, the late Melissa Mathison (“E.T.”), downplay the darker aspects of Dahl’s book in favor of farce in the final section. This includes her majesty and her corgis sampling a fizzy BFG potion that causes a mass eruption of explosive flatulence in the palace.
This is Spielberg’s youngest-skewing film since “The Adventures of Tintin,” and the pacing is uncommonly relaxed for a contemporary film. “The BFG,” which runs a full two hours, might have benefited from slightly tighter editing.
Even if it doesn’t quite reach the summit of Spielberg classics like “E.T.,” this is still well worth seeing for Rylance and some of the year’s most beguiling screen images — from the BFG trying to camouflage himself in the London streetscape to an utterly mesmerizing visit to Dream Country that fans will be replaying for decades.