The BFG (PG)

three stars

Dir: Steven Spielberg

With: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton

Runtime: 117 minutes

STEVEN Spielberg has been a gateway to great cinema for many, so it is fitting that he should one day adapt the writer who has done the same for children and books. Yes, wide-eyed young folk of the franchise age, before there was JK Rowling and Harry Potter there was Mr Roald Dahl, welcoming youngsters into the land of reading with tales of chocolate factories, giant peaches, and big friendly giants.

But then Spielberg, master of the American blockbuster, has form when it comes to adapting European children’s literature. He already has on his shelf a JM Barrie (Hook), a Hergé (The Adventures of Tintin) and a Morpurgo (War Horse). The partnership is not always successful, with the latter especially tugging on the heartstrings in an unnecessarily violent fashion.

With Dahl, however, Spielberg forms a more winning partnership. Yes, The BFG is dull in parts and soggy in the middle. It is sometimes tin-eared when it comes to dialogue, muddled in period, and there is not enough of the kind of scrumptiously wicked humour that Dahl loved and children adore.

For once, however, Spielberg’s tendency towards sentimentality works in his favour. Here is a film with its heart in the right place and it does in the end win one round. Here, also, is a picture that is not above the kind of flatulence joke that is of royal appointment quality. Such things may not matter to the arthouse crowd, but they do to those under yay height.

Spielberg opens his film in a London of indeterminate period, where people speak in 1950s fashion but some dress in Sports Direct’s finest. Our heroine, Sophie, an orphan, could have escaped from a Dickens novel. No matter, as she knows the three golden rules to follow if there is a strange noise outside in the middle of the night. One, never get out of bed; two, never go to the window; and three, never look behind the curtain. Sophie (played by Ruby Barnhill) promptly breaks every one of them.

So it is that she is taken by the BFG to the land of giants. She does not know he is friendly at first, so there is a lot of reassurance required, both of Sophie and the audience, which the screenplay by the late Melissa Matheson (ET, Kundun) handles expertly.

The soothing tones of Mark Rylance come in especially handy here in playing the giant. So, too, does the fact that while he sounds like Rylance, star of Wolf Hall and Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies (for which the Brit won a best supporting actor Oscar), he looks uncannily like Paul Whitehouse from the Fast Show. Imagine Harry Enfield being given the voice of Stephen Fry, or T-Rex miaowing like a kitten. Who could be frightened of that?

Barnhill and the always outstanding Rylance rub along well enough with the CGI, and there are some winning images, such as giants sleeping under grass to make hills. You will doubtless recognise the wonders of Skye and Orkney in Spielberg’s vision of giant country. Inside the BFG’s cave, multicoloured dreams are captured in jars, and there are cosy nooks in which the likes of Sophie can take refuge when not so friendly giants come calling.

As in Jack and the Beanstalk, the film only really takes off when the giant enters Sophie’s world and the laughs proper can begin. It is this section of the film that comes closest to the irreverent spirit of Dahl. Before that, the film has a tendency to be too wistful and earnest in getting across its message about being brave, standing up to bullies, and trusting that things will turn out for the best.

For all the money obviously spent here, it is a delight to see a tiny human steal the show from under everyone’s nostrils, giant and otherwise. Not Miss Barnhill, but Penelope Wilton. The actor who played Isobel Crawley in Downton Abbey does such a first class turn here as the Queen one suspects she has just put Helen Mirren out of a job.