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The BFG | 2016 | PG | - 0.3.2

Based on a Roald Dahl book, the Big Friendly Giant (Mark Rylance) helps a little orphan girl (Ruby Burnhill) navigate life and its challenges, while both learn what friendship really means. Also with Penelope Wilton, Rebecca Hall and Rafe Spall, and the voices of Bill Hader and Jermain Clement. Directed by Steven Spielberg. [1:53]

SEX/NUDITY 0 - Several male giants wear kilts and shawls, revealing their back and chest; their bodies are covered in scruffy hair and dirt.

VIOLENCE/GORE 3 - A giant towers over buildings, wearing old clothes and a cloak as he wanders the streets at night, and his footsteps boom. Several giants in several scenes are covered in dirt and grime, clad in dirty kilts and say several times that they eat "beings" (human beings); their teeth are dirty and crooked, and their faces lined and leathery, and they continually sniff, snort, and mutter as they look for humans.
 Several giants march across a moor; their names are Bone Crusher, Blood Bottler, Flesh Lumpeater, Gizzard Gulper, Mince Dripper, and Butcher Boy and they hunt for a young girl in a cave-house twice (we hear several times that giants eat humans), causing her to become frightened, run into hiding places and she slides down a water slide mining-type apparatus, unharmed.
 A giant fills a metal device with many snapping nightmares and a young girl runs with the device down a hillside and opens the container among dirty, sleeping giants, who inhale the nightmares, cough, awaken, scream and begin arguing: military helicopters drop slimy snozzcumbers on a giant's head (resembling bird defecation), then drop cables and snare the giants in nets, carrying them away; an old stone building crumbles and falls forward in dust and the giants are dropped into cold water, which they hate, far away where they climb onto a small, treeless island dominated by a tall craggy peak and they are given a large crate of uncooked beans for food and they grumble and moan.
 A giant hand uprights a turned-over trash can and a young girl looking out a window panics and hyperventilates; the giant removes his cloak and picks the girl up through her window, carrying her off in a bag and he runs and jumps across a highway and from mountain to mountain as the girl whimpers. A giant emerges from out of a short hill and snarls into the camera in close-up; we see a large red iris in one eye.
 A giant blows a dream into a woman's bedroom and she talks in her sleep, "Oh, no! Make them stop!" A blurry dream bubble twice shows the shadow of a giant swallowing the shadow of a child; when the woman awakes, she says, "The dream was so bloody" and orders men to stop man-eating giants (we do not see any blood or gore). A young girl and a giant argue briefly several times about other giants wanting to hunt her down and once, she says, "My blood will be on your hands." A giant tells a young girl that he once had a little boy as a friend, but the boy was killed by other giants. A giant snarls into the camera, "I only eats beings (humans)." A giant says twice that he has a boo-boo on his finger (we see no injury); another giant washes the finger and the first giant shouts in fear of water. A young orphaned girl with insomnia says that the bogey man comes out at night (we never see him). A young girl says that 3:00 am is the witching hour. A young girl tells a giant that the orphanage mistress is crazy and locks children in the cellar; she shouts at four drunken men in the street (please see the Substance Use category for more details) and they run away. A giant returns a girl to her orphanage for safety, but she cries, jumps off a balcony railing and he catches her in one hand.
 Glass jars of dreams are neon colors of blue, green, white, yellow and red: The red dreams are bad dreams that look like blurry small octopi and they snap and sizzle; the other dreams are balls of light that sometimes take the form of blurred humans or fairies dancing and a room is full of glass jars of dreams. A giant places a blue dream jar in a long trumpet and blows dreams over children, who inhale them and smile.
 A giant and a young girl jump into a sparkling neon lake at night and come up in a misty world with aurora borealis; a sparkling stream flows uphill and the giant says that this is the land of dreams as he catches differently colored balls of neon light (dreams) in a net and places them into glass jars; he catches his foot in his net and falls to the ground (he is unharmed), and a particularly large golden light draws the outline of the girl's face on the glass of its jar, the giant seems to disappear, but reaches through water and pulls the girl back to the everyday world. A young boy dreams in his bed and we see the shadow of a man in the dream faint and fall off-screen as the boy laughs in his dream.
 A toy locomotive in a cave-house runs across the screen in flames and crashes with a loud noise off-screen; giants burn papers in the cave and leave ashes as a smaller giant hits them on the behinds with a red-hot poker and they run away; the smaller giant pushes a larger giant into a water fall inside the cave and the wet man screams, afraid of water. Many giants sleeping in a field (some slobber) wake up; they pick up a smaller giant and toss him like a football (no injuries), they put him on a human garbage truck and roll him down a hill like a toy at the same time that a giant using vans for roller skates rolls toward the truck; the truck rolls between the legs of the skater and the head of the giant on the truck hits the groin of the skater who groans and falls over, holding his groin. Giants scream as it begins to rain; they are afraid of water. Dozens of palace guards point rifles at a giant in a garden, then lower them on a "stand down" order; inside the palace, the giant accidentally breaks a glass chandelier that crashes to a point below the frame.
 A giant mentions that he does not like to burp and a young girl says burping is natural. A giant has flatulence from homemade liquor (please see the Substance Use category for more details) that bursts out as a large green cloud with flashing sparks and a loud boom. Several people and three dogs drink some liquor and they all begin to have strange expressions before emitting large green clouds of loudly booming flatulence (two men are thrown off ladders, unharmed and the dogs skid across the floor and out the door). A giant sharpens the blade of a large axe and carries a little girl in a skillet to a table, where she hops out; he slices a slimy, warty, greenish snozzcumber (like a cucumber) and later, the girl hides inside the rest of the vegetable and emerges covered in green slime. A giant spits out a bowlful of coffee, saying it tastes bad by exclaiming "Odorshrunkl!"; we see four men who were drenched head to toe by the coffee. A giant eats from a bowl of snozzcumber, mixed with reddish wilted star-shaped things.

LANGUAGE 2 - 1 mild scatological term (whizpopper, i.e. flatulence), name-calling (wonky, incompetent, crazy, blattered [drunk], cannibal, monsters, wicked beast, ucky yucky, filthy old thizwiggler, snapperwhippers, murderfuls [murderers], chap-pain, chat-backs [back talkers], horrigous [horrible], frogglefrump [also used once as a nickname later], trogglehump [monster], swigpoo), exclamations (oh my, oh shizbits, bogwinkles, odorshrunk, deliver us from weasels).

SUBSTANCE USE - A giant has a large bottle of fizzy green fermented snozzcumber juice ("frogscottle") and the bubbles float down instead of up (he drinks from the bottle once), a giant pours champagne glasses of liquor for several people and three dogs (they all drink), and a young girl sees four drunken men in the street at night outside her window (they slur their words, giggle, stumble and dance in a puddle). A giant uses a small tube to blow a wispy dream essence into a metal container and looks as if he was puffing on a cigarette.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - People who are different, orphans, giants, legends, fantasy, danger, safety, cooperation, kindness, friendship, respect, trust, belief, determination, dreams and nightmares, magic, happiness.

MESSAGE - Someone much different from you can be your best friend and share your dreams.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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