A WISH FOR GIANTS is about Sophie, a young volunteer, who meets her kindred spirit in Roxie, a girl with a life threatening brain tumor and a unique wish to meet Bigfoot.
Based off the novel by of the same name by AARON DUNBAR, A WISH FOR GIANTS was originally written to raise money to help children with life threatening medical conditions get their wishes granted.
A WISH FOR GIANTS is an interesting take on wishes granted for the terminally ill. Instead the trips, the unique experiences, it focuses on Roxie’s wish to meet Bigfoot.
Instead of pushing the absurdity of the wish, the film shrugs its shoulders at it and says anything is possible.
Where A WISH FOR GIANTS fails is that it never gives background on why Roxie picks to meet Bigfoot as her wish. As the movie starts, she is not obsessed with the beast and it doesn’t come into her life until a friend gives her a stuffed Bigfoot. The viewer just has to assume she has a connection without real reasoning to understand say. In Roxie’s words, if she can make others believe then there is hope. It’s like she randomly picked the hardest wish in the world to make true because she couldn’t wish for her cancer to go away. And while I understand that reasoning having had friends and family battle cancer, the film is carried on the shoulders of an afterthought versus the shoulders of a little girl’s real obsession.
Another failure in the movie is the character Derrick as the so to speak villain. He portrays the pompous and unlikeable rich brat. His narrative is the forced and over done “rich kid being ignored by parents” but also never comes to fruition. Every action he takes is a predictable action someone with money has. There’s no suspense or surprise. He gets way too much air time without driving the film forward and actually takes away from the film versus contributing to it. Viewers will immediately hate him but that hate stalls and he becomes annoying as a gnat in your ear for the rest of the film.
A school ground accident, a parent’s anguish, the reality of a brain tumor, the determination of a volunteer to make the impossible happen and a Sasquatch is a perfect mix to turn the tear factory on and get those emotions into high gear but A WISH FOR GIANTS doesn’t quite tug at the heart strings nor the emotions. The viewer never gets the opportunity to connect to the characters emotionally because the scenes and the dialogue are forced, quick, and often without emotion.
A WISH FOR GIANTS comes from a good place in the heart but falls short on packing the punch of emotions.
