Friday, August 19, 2016

BFG - BIG in Heart

Expectations and hopes always run amok whenever a Spielberg flick hits the screen. It was again no different this time as Roald Dahl's classic was transformed into a visual paradise by the ace director.

BFG gigantically stands,pun intended, for Big Friendly Giant opens up with the bespectacled and orphaned Sophie taken into custody by a stupendously tall elderly person to his home in the Giant Country as he felt that Sophie might spill the beans about him to someone. The adventure for Sophie begins there and so for us too.

The first half was very slow as Sophie and BFG exchanged many a conversation to give us the backdrop of the gentle and timid BFG's kind-hearted nature and his dreamy, pun intended, nature of work - collecting, bottling and sharing dreams. It was really an eye-popping moment when Sophie and BFG threw themselves into the colorful and mesmerizing dream country to gather the good and bad dreams. We are also introduced to his wild bunch of bird-brained, loutish, uncivilized and man-eating towering companions who treat the pusillanimous BFG to the point where Sophie could take it no longer and constantly ask BFG to pay them back with their own currency. Being a soft person, BFG was taken for a ride, literally!, by the boorish and savage monsters. It was a sight to behold when BFG was made to skate on a truck from the top of a hill along with the hidden Sophie.

The transition into the second half which was racier and more funnier than the first was a big, again pun intended, sigh of relief. How Sophie and the BFG mapped out their master plan to finally put rest for good the mighty tall Barbarians involving the Queen of England was a masterstroke on the part of Roald Dahl to even conceive such an ingenious idea to tackle the Fleshlumpeaters. The execution to translate the wondrous imagination onto the big screen by Spielberg was equally impressive especially the scenes involving BFG inside the Buckingham Palace and the slinky actions that followed with the capture of the man-eating giants by the army who wisely deported them to a remote and uninhabited island leaving them behind with snoozcumbers. The irony is that they hate the vegetable very much! 

It was a squealing and cackling delight to watch BFG inside the Palace along with the Queen and the expressions that were carted out by everyone on seeing the giant. The Frobscottle was hilarious to the extent that it left the entire theatre in splits, pun is viciously intended here! Not to mention the BFG's absurd jabberwockies through out the course of the movie that provided the very much desired comic comfort other amidst the snail pace of the first half. Though BFG lacked the needed momentum prior to the interval, it picked up pace in the second half and sprinted towards the finish line with top honors.

BFG is that kind of sweet and nice movie which you can just watch once, laugh heartily and forget it sweetly! It may not be Spielberg's best but BFG certainly provided a great relief amidst a tumultuously hyped super hero and horror genres that were tearing down and blasting the world apart, the explosive pun intended. 


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