iTunes Exclusive Episode The BFG

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Welcome, it is a 220F, one of these things.
My name is Rob, I'm the executive producer of the Clubhouse podcast, and I like to stand up tall in the land of giants.
Joining me across the desk is he tends to do from time to time as the official fact checker of this show.
And a man, you can call him, you know what I'm a giant if you want to.
They can really offend it. You may know it's fun, don't go, but his mom and even don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go.
I'm Horn Swagel, compared to Frenchy.
That's true, Frenchy's demand, you can see this.
Whatever we do, one of these things, it is to review something in this particular episode is no different.
Today, we are going to review for you a movie that we have seen within the last 24 hours of recording this.
It is called the BFG.
For what we start this whole thing, yes sir.
We have to thank our good friends, Susan, Jen, everybody at Susan Jacobs and Disney for the invite to this day.
Rock the party, the rocks the Pignata.
We love them guys. Thank you so much. Such fans of those guys.
And we thank wonderful people for letting us see this film.
So we can review it for you so you can make informed decisions when you go to see the movies.
For those of you who don't know about the BFG, it is based on the book by Roll Doll, one of my favorite children's authors of all time.
Two of his books.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie of the Grace Glass Elevator are two of only three books I've ever read more than once.
I've not read this one.
I've nor have I read James and the giant peach which has also been made into a film.
He's at quite a few of his movies and books made into films.
The story of this surrounds Sophie.
Sophie lives in England and what we assume is the 1980s.
She's played by Ruby Barnhill. Her father is also in the film.
Really?
Yeah, he's one of the soldiers later on. I found that out.
And she is in this film. She's an orphan so that's a little bit different.
But she's also kind of an insomnia. She doesn't sleep very well.
And so one night she's up and reading a book and she's been hearing all these rumors about these children disappearing.
Well, she happens to stumble upon seeing a giant.
That giant sees that she sees him and so he can't risk her running her mouth.
So he grabs her and takes her to his home.
And the giant seems to be FG.
Well, she names him.
Yeah.
She names because he's called Runt by other giants because he is much smaller than the other giant.
But she names him BFG which stands for Big Friendly Giant.
If you play Doom, it's not that BFG.
So stop it now.
What she finds out is BFG is not an evil giant.
He's not. He's different from the other giants.
There's a couple of names of giants that show the voice of the giants.
You might recognize.
Jemaine Clement from flight of the concords and Bill Hayter from Saturday Night Live.
Do a couple of the voices here.
And what she finds out is BFG.
He captures dreams.
And he helps people have good dreams or bad dreams or whatever.
And that's really, I mean, that's his life.
She decides she's going to help him overcome these other giants who are kind of bullying him.
It's about as far as I want.
And because I do want to say one minor thing is the giants are mean.
And they are people leaders.
Yes, they are.
And he wants to protect.
Exactly.
Well, even, yeah, I want to say.
And BFG played by the great Mark Rylant Oscar Old War winner.
Yep.
From this past year for Bridge of Spies.
Interesting notes about this film.
This is the first Steven Spielberg directed this.
Yep.
This is the first time Spielberg and Disney have worked together.
Which is mind blowing when you think about it.
But of course, so he worked with Mark Rylant on Bridge of Spies.
This is a full two hours long.
Be aware of it.
And honestly, it feels that way.
I want to do my criticism first.
Let's do the watch gauge.
Let me ask you that.
The watch gauge.
Half an hour.
Okay.
Which I thought we were a little farther along when we were.
The first two thirds of this film.
We're snail's pace for me.
This was a snail in a school zone for me.
When you make movies that are aimed at kids, you need to sit in that 131.45's kind of pushing
a pocket because door.
Vinydory was an hour 45.
And that was pushing the limit for what I would think a kid would sit through.
Now, in the screening we attended, most of the kids in there were fairly well-behaved.
But I think it's hard to carry.
Especially I feel like this where I was talking to somebody about it on the day we record this.
And I was like the first two thirds of it felt like I felt when I was watching the fellowship of the ring.
They're still walking.
You know?
I kind of disagree.
If you go to my written review at www.cobasplacas.com, that's our website.
I put on there that I agree with you in some aspects.
I thought the first half hour did okay.
Because you know, him grabbing your ticket or to the giant land and learn what's going on.
And then you learn about the big bad giants and all that.
That wasn't too bad.
That kept me interested.
I thought a photo key on that.
I know it's a giant country.
Exactly.
Okay.
Okay.
But then what happens is then it starts to really drag for me.
For about a good half hour.
So pretty much once it establishes it had a problem.
Yeah.
Once they get up top and he just he just he captures the dreams.
Hmm.
After that point he kind of really likes that sequence.
Oh, I did love that scene.
I love the scene.
But that's one of the plot kind of.
You know, we're hitting a freeway.
Rep to 75.
Okay.
Let's go 50 for a while.
And then all of a sudden after one part now we'll say this.
One of the funniest things I've seen this year is the breakfast scene.
I'm going to leave it up.
It happens right before the third act.
Yeah.
So the breakfast scene as I'm going to say before the free was incredibly funny.
That had me rolling on that.
And that kind of I think to help make up a little bit of the, you know, the dragging before that.
Then the last half but then the last half hour.
I think full was pretty well at that point.
It does pick up at the end.
Yeah.
I will say that the last half an hour.
But it was also the last half an hour for me also felt rushed.
I can see the very end rush.
Yeah.
There wasn't enough.
And I don't know the source material here well enough.
But it just didn't seem like the payoff was good enough for me.
And that could be the way the book does it.
I don't know.
I'm waiting to hear.
As we're recording this, Chad is actually screening it on a separate night.
So you'll have his written review at www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
Which is our website.
And I will be interested to see his point of view because his wife was of British descent.
This is one of her favorite books that she had growing up.
So I really want to hear from her from the aspect of the source material.
Visually.
Absolutely.
Just look gorgeous.
We actually saw it in 3D.
Yeah, which is 3D here.
I thought was better than the 3D in Dory.
I thought that 3D in Dory wasn't really great.
Yeah.
But the 3D here, the use of space that Spielberg uses, space in depth.
It really, really worked here.
The scene where he catches dreams at night.
That was beautiful.
I mean, when you're close enough to Ryland's because Ryland's his character is all CGI.
And yeah, but he played the part well.
And there's chemistry even though he's just a voice.
But he was the character model because that's the rendering.
When they're so close to him, you can see his pores.
Yes.
The rendering was absolutely beautiful.
There's nothing visually about this film that I can criticize.
I mean, it's, it works well.
The sound design works really because the sound design you rely on a lot of the film,
like this, too, because there's a lot going on from an environmental standpoint.
Beautifully shot.
Beautifully rendered.
My thing is I enjoyed seeing the 3D and I thought I'd enhance some,
but it's like, is it worth the extra cost?
That's where I'm conflicted.
Is it as beautiful?
I can see a few scenes where I didn't enhance it,
but I don't know if it's worth the extra cost.
I think you're good either way.
Yeah.
But I wouldn't say it's required.
Exactly.
That's where I want to put it.
Exactly.
I mean, if I've got a couple extra bucks to burn,
I'd spring for the 3D.
Yeah.
Because it really does look beautiful.
But for me, this could have been a 90 minute film,
and been more enjoyable for me.
Because as we like to say on this show,
there was a lot of me going,
there's the chase and how can I cut to it.
I don't know.
It just, and I felt kind of like the end credits were kind of wasted too,
because there was no 3D in the end credits.
Yes, just like there was like when we saw Dory,
which was really well done.
Yeah, the different levels.
I just don't know.
Like this movie that first two thirds,
if it just moves slow for me,
that I was just like, come for me the middle part.
I'll be on that.
I love the everything else about it.
Because I love the chemistry in the actress.
I mean, Sophie and Clement.
There's basically there's only three characters.
There's Clement.
There's a new place, Rush Lumpeter.
Yeah.
The big head giant, the big bully,
the big alpha male, whatever.
Barnhill and violence.
It's basically those three.
There's a lot of supporting roles from the staff at the
powerhouse.
The queen doesn't get the queen.
Yeah.
She gets the queen involved.
Yeah.
And the lady that played the queen,
Penelope Wilton, I thought was great as well.
Yeah.
I just, there was too much style over substance for me.
For me, I liked it overall,
except for that half hour pace on the thing.
It just, yeah, it did.
Usually stunning.
I thought the acting was great.
The voice.
I mean, violence had a great character even though it's just his voice.
Yeah, absolutely.
Beautiful on that.
You know, he fit the part perfectly.
Yeah.
And come in.
That's come in after the thing.
You know, so I thought he really voiced it well too.
And so I mean, the mix of the acting,
voicing everything.
That's, I loved everything else about that.
Just that middle plot.
Which in a drags.
Anything else we want to talk about from we get to.
First of it is good for the entire family.
Yeah.
It's a family here.
Yeah, fake good family movie.
So.
Yeah.
Let's just, let's just go for it.
The way we do the final analysis on this show.
It is rated PG by the way.
The way we do the final analysis on this show is we're not going to give you thumbs up.
Thumbs down.
We're not going to give you stars.
Letter grades numbers.
Anything like that.
Our audience whom we affectionately refer to as the empire.
They want us to go deeper.
So we're going to do that.
There's two questions involved here.
Question number one is would we see this again?
If the answer is no, then we're done here.
If the answer is yes.
That it's going to be how far we will need to go to see it.
Your top notch at this point is evening show on a weekend.
So you're going to pay the most.
Below that we do a twilight show below that.
We would do a matinee below that.
We would do early morning on a weekend.
And continuing on down the list to second run at the dollar theater.
Red box netflix cable.
Dawn, would you see this again?
Yes.
How far are you willing to go?
I'd say something like a matinee for the entire family or even a twilight.
So maybe.
You know, see it.
Then they have dinner with the kids afterwards.
I would not see this again by myself.
Okay.
If I was with one of my many nieces and nephews or, you know, my god daughter or whatever.
If they were like, I really want to see this.
You'd sit in.
I would go with them because I would also know when I could walk out of the theater and take a breather.
I would probably do a matinee.
That way we could go and enjoy the rest of our day or whatever.
I just, I can't bring myself the full price on this.
Oh, no.
Just because of the database.
Yeah.
Anything else?
Again, we have to thank Jenna and Susan.
That's wonderful people.
Disney.
Thanks for the invite.
The great job.
Yeah.
They're professionals.
We love them.
It is the BFG directed by the great Steven Spielberg.
Let us do the plug.
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I am at yes that Rob Irvin that has spelled ERV.
I am my normal co-host for this show who's watching the movie even as we record this.
So he's getting ready to.
He's at the theater at this point.
He is Chad Womack.
His Twitter handle is Chad N.P.G.
69.
I'm at fun.
Don't go and you can email me at dawn at the clubhouse podcast.com.
Email dawn for information on how we can do a live show for you.
We love doing live remote shows and hanging out with the empire.
You can email me if you'd like questions, comments, concerns, tell me to go
Pound Sand on rob at the clubhouse podcast.com.
Chad is Chad at the clubhouse podcast.com.
Charlotte Parker is on Pinterest because we are morally obligated to say that.
And Jules is with him.
Because she's his wife is kind of how the deal works.
Our normal show every Sunday night 70's turn for Pacific is your one-stop shop for all things pop culture.
So until next time, for Don, for the empire, I'm Rob.
Clubhouse is closed.
And you can handle it.
Pretty Palmer working in the palace.
I'm just saying.