When published in 1982, Roald Dahl’s The BFG was dedicated to the memory of his late daughter, Olivia, who died age seven some 20 years prior. In 2016, the live-action adaptation of the novel from director Steven Spielberg takes on a bittersweet quality of its own: its screenwriter, Melissa Mathison, passed away due to cancer eight months before the film’s release. In the same year The BFG was published, Spielberg and Mathison collaborated on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which has endured as one of the most beloved family films in cinema history. Spielberg’s adaptation of The BFG not only succeeds as a lovely swansong for the screenwriter but also proves the director’s most charming fusion of whimsy and childlike wonder since that career milestone – you know, excluding the one where a robot child’s world goes to hell less than halfway through…

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