Spielberg weaves magic out of Dahl's The BFG

There's a secret about children that Steven Spielberg, Melissa Mathison and Roald Dahl have always known - that no matter how innocent, kids are as capable of understanding darkness as adults, and sometimes even more so. It's not that it's some completely unacknowledged truth, but it is one that rarely seems to permeate what we consider "children's entertainment" in any real way. It just makes adults too uncomfortable. It's also the reason why the under-10 set flocks to Dahl.

A measured embrace of the deep menace in Dahl's words is why this long-time-coming adaptation of his 1982 book The BFG not only succeeds, but shines. It's not just some pleasant romp into the world of giants. It's an honest-to-goodness, gut punch of a journey, crackling with heart, uncertainty, and overflowing with all-out wonder.

There's really no other way to tell a story about an orphan who is captured by a giant and taken to a land crawling with much larger giants who like the taste of human beings, or "beens" as they're called.