At first when i first observed The BFG with this year's Cannes Film Festival, I actually have to confess We were underwhelmed.
Yes, the visualisation of Roald Dahl's much loved children's publication was a pleasure to behold but, hey, this is 2016, visual-effects designers can now do just about anything and the film is directed by the great Steven Spielberg, so the fact that it would look wonderful was always specific.
Nevertheless it also seemed slow and considerably uneven and you could, if you were so inclined, view the whole thing as one long build-up to a joke about the California king passing wind.
I has not been convinced and, from a so-so performance at the US box office, I actually wasn't alone.
Is it possible the BFG - one of the very eagerly anticipated films of 2016 - is merely plain NVG: not very good?
Well, previously being back to see it for another time, We can confidently let you know that the answer is no.
The BFG is a gentle and, for the most part, minor-key delight that discovers Spielberg, who will be 70 this year, evidently in reflective mood and yet absolutely confident in his own film-making decision taking.
The result is a film it doesn't feel the need to relentlessly strike every commercial beat but takes its own long-winding path, and is all the more interesting - and, indeed, unusual - for that.
Its success flows from three key decisions. First, Spielberg helped bring in Melissa Mathison to write the screenplay, identifying that the woman who wrote E. T. - a movie about a lonely little boy befriending a tiny abandoned alien - would be just the right person to conform The BFG, which at heart is the storyline of a lonely orphan woman befriending a lonely, much-put-upon giant.
Despite a few of jarring Americanisms and an awful moment of Dick Van Dyke cockney - 'You're all bladdered, I'm callin' the coppers' - it was clearly a good decision and one lent extra poignancy by the fact that Mathison died late in 2015, soon after filming finished.
An even better - and certainly braver - decision, however, was heading to place so much faith in Mark Rylance.
He brings such meekness and emotional vulnerability to the title role - together with a a little bit unplaceable country-bumpkin accent - that at times there is a distinct opportunity of the action arriving almost to a cease.
Other directors might have panicked, but Spielberg has the Hollywood clout to say 'No, it’s this that We want, ' and have it.
The result isn't always commercial but - hoping the inevitable arguments about if the performance so heavily reliant on movement capture and visual results qualifies - could secure Rylance another serious honor nomination or two.
Just remember that , earlier this year this individual won the Oscar for his supporting role in Spielberg's Bridge Of Agents.
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