Walking into a Steven Spielberg's film is like walking into an ever-ready classic! He tells the tale to us like kids yearning for bedtime stories! Speaking of kids, Ruby Barnhill's voice for her character Sophie is the director's narration tool. Girl killed it! That's the first thing you'll notice!
No one could ever be able to point out & say a Spielberg's motion picture's cinematography is bad. The master composed the shots as if the scenes were directly torn off the storybook's pages! Giant Country's setting, house accessories & starry night landscapes with dream droplets lobbing down the leaves are dazzling! You wouldn't want to miss the scene where BFG and Sophie jumps into the ocean of dreams, only to find them laterally existing on another dimension! How magically wondrous! Do we really need to do a special mention of John William's sincere score for such a gorgeous looking plateau?
Mark Rylance as BFG is Seussian! Man played the persona to the T! His dialect & intonations are fantastic, although sometimes the made-up words do come across as a little overdone. The friendship that he shares with Sophie is divinely loving. It's heavily emotional, and it does bring true tears to the eyes many times! There's nothing else we could do apart from pondering upon how the Motion Capture technology sits so well in the hands of Steven Spielberg. Be it The Adventures of Tintin or this, there's definitely a surreal secret of execution of his in making the only distinctive photorealistic rendition among the crowded usage of it today.
For the better, there should have been a build-up to the actual premise at the start of the movie. This way, the makers could have leveraged upon the giant mystery even more, before the actual kidnapping event takes place. By doing so, the lags that exist in between Sophie's & BFG's journey would have evaporated too. There are too many of it in the exploration phase of Giant Country.
Giant Country seems exciting. At first. But then quickly, one begins to feel the dullness. Something is hollow. The world although pretty, is empty. Nothing much is going on. There's a considerable lack of conflict, drama and tension. Why are the occupants too few? When there's nothing much to tell, it is only wise to shrink Act I further. This is the biggest flaw of the picture, recovering only at Plot Point II when Sophie discovers The Queen's portrait, shortly after the extended midpoint incident where Fleshlumpeater (Jemaine Clement) and his gang scuffles BFG's lab.
Initially, the plan for seeking The Queen's help to get rid of the evil Giants didn't sound like a good resolution. But, my God, did it roll out like a red carpet! Act III of The BFG is the best. BFG acquainting in the castle, with whopping food treat and roundhouse Whizzpopping are sure to bring the roof down with genuine laughter! This is the thing about Spielberg. Just watch how he managed to blend fantasy & realism so well without a blemish; without a doubt, without a fizzle! Not forgetting, visual humor is the best humor. Look at how the giant hides from public by shading itself with the city properties. It's not a cakewalk to capture childlike innocence as such in a film that's meant for children.
At this point of technological advancement times, there really shouldn't be any green screens standing out like sore thumbs at the backgrounds! Yes, BFG's job is to catch & blow dreams. But, his occupation doesn't seem believable, in the sense that, what is the necessity for a giant to do so? Is the story trying to tell us that this is how dreams originate? Mentioning it clearly would have been a boost. Why are the other giants… corrupted? Doesn't it seem a little monotonous in terms of character building? One can ask why BFG brought Sophie back to his place after deciding to leave her at the orphanage. But if that didn't happen, we don't have a film. This one is a nitpicky, but you could sense at places, Ruby Barnhill's trying a little hard to act.