The 7 best Roald Dahl movies, ranked

7. The BFG (2016)

This Dahl adaptation hit theaters in 2016, with Oscar winner Mark Rylance bringing the titular Big Friendly Giant to the big screen with his cow eyes, lanky limbs, and enormous ears. After spying the extra-large intruder outsider her window, charming orphan Sophie (played by Ruby Barnhill) is whisked away into Giant Country—a land of bone-crushing giants, bottled dreams, and stinky snozzcumbers.

You'd think a mix of Steven Spielberg and Dahl would be an automatic slam dunk, but this version doubles down on the gorgeous, eye-popping visuals—at the expense of the story. The best Dahl tales have a slightly sinister undertone, and The BFG takes a more neutered, childish approach. (What set Dahl apart was his ability to write for children without talking down to them.) The result is a pleasant enough yet forgettable film.

6. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

Of the two movies based on Dahl's most beloved book, Tim Burton's 2005 version sticks a little closer to the original story than the 1971 Gene Wilder musical, even if Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka is a childlike candy entrepreneur who's part Michael Jackson, part Anna Wintour, and part Howard Hughes. As the misanthropic Wonka, Depp takes Charlie (Freddie Highmore) and his four spoiled companions on a wild and frequently dangerous tour of his crazy confectionery, including blueberry explosions, live squirrels, and, of course, Oompa Loompas.

Is it as heartfelt as the Wilder version? Not even close. (Don't even get us started on the nonsensical "dentist" backstory.) But Burton puts his own twisted spin on the Dahl classic for a film that's occasionally sour and often sweet.

5. The Witches (1990)

There are plenty of terrifying antagonists in all of Dahl's work—as a child, I had nightmares about the Vermicious Knids from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator—but few are as chilling as the Grand High Witch and her coven of infanticidal witches. Our heroes are the tiny Luke (Jasen Fisher) and his grandmother Helga (Mai Zetterling), who visit a seaside hotel only to accidentally stumble upon a meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children—a.k.a. the annual meeting of all the witches in England. When they find Luke listening in on their evil machinations, they turn him into a mouse, and it's up to Luke and his grandmother to take on the witches once and for all.

The Man Who Fell to Earth director Nicolas Roeg helmed this Dahl adaptation, with help from Jim Henson's Creature Shop and their delightfully wacky effects. Anjelica Huston is at her most sinister and dramatic as the villainous Grand High Witch, and The Witches captures both the hilarity and horror of Dahl's best (which wasn't executed as well in the 2020 remake).

4. James and the Giant Peach (1996)

Dahl imbued all of his stories with some sense of magic, but James and the Giant Peach is perhaps the most outright fantastical. So, it's no wonder that director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) decided to tackle these bugs, pirates, and robotic sharks with a clever mix of live action and stop-motion animation.

Poor James (voiced by Paul Terry) lives with his horrifying aunts, Spiker and Sponge (voiced by Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margolyes), but his luck changes when he's given a bag of mysterious "crocodile tongues," which he inadvertently spills in his garden. Soon, the barren peach tree in his yard sprouts the largest peach in the world, and when James crawls inside, he meets a group of enormous, anthropomorphic, and rather polite bugs, who join him on an airborne adventure across the Atlantic Ocean.

The gorgeous animation lends an otherworldly and zany edge to Dahl's twisted tale, plus there's a stellar voice cast including Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, and David Thewlis. James and the Giant Peach is one of Dahl's most peculiar and macabre stories, and the film perfectly channels that outlandish atmosphere.

3. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Dahl himself wasn't a fan of Mel Stuart's 1971 musical and how it deviated from the book, and, to be fair, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is not quite a faithful adaptation. Rather than focusing on the downtrodden Charlie Bucket (after all, the book is titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, not Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), the film turned its eye to the mysterious chocolate genius behind it all, played brilliantly by Gene Wilder.

Most things are the same: The unfortunate Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) is one of five children to win a golden ticket to visit Wonka's magical chocolate factory, and, along the way, his spoiled companions get picked off one by one by tumbling into the chocolate river, falling down a garbage chute, and more. But the film is actually stronger for deviating from the source material, and Wilder brought an unsettling sense of mystery to his role, oscillating between delightful and menacing. Both the book and the film are excellent, for different reasons, but they can both take you to a world of pure imagination.

2. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Most of Dahl's heroes are small children, but Wes Anderson's meticulous stop-motion masterpiece puts Mr. Fox front and center, voiced to cussing perfection by George Clooney. As the patriarch of the Fox family, Mr. Fox earns a living by stealing from the cruel and foolish farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. When the farmers set their sights on Fox, he engineers a devious plan of retaliation, recruiting his woodland neighbors for help. (The stacked voice cast includes Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, and more.)

Anderson's obsession with detail means that he's the perfect director to tackle this whimsical tale, one that's part endearing fable, part madcap heist. Not only are the four-legged characters relatable and the sets astonishingly detailed, but Fantastic Mr. Fox triumphantly captures the spirit of Dahl's original book.

1. Matilda (1996)

As a precocious young elementary schooler, the titular Matilda (Mara Wilson) is a genius, but her ignorant parents (played by Rhea Perlman and an excellent Danny DeVito, who also directed) refuse to acknowledge her brilliance. Matilda puts her brain to work by devising brilliant forms of revenge on her parents or spending her days at the local library, but by the time she enters school, her brain power is seriously underused. Her kind teacher, Miss Honey (Embeth Davidtz), recognizes Matilda's potential, but she and the rest of the school live in constant fear of the tyrannical headmistress Miss Trunchbull (Pam Ferris). Intellectually bored and frustrated by her oppressive school, Matilda eventually discovers that she can manifest her unused brain power as telekinesis, and she soon puts her newly discovered powers to work.

Dahl wrote about many clever, misfit children facing off against cruel and ignorant adults, but none were ever as delightful or relatable as Matilda, the telekinetic bookworm. The 1996 film is a near-perfect adaptation of the book, encapsulating Dahl's signature tone and how it so effortlessly balanced the comedic, the sadistic, and the heartfelt. It's also the reason we'll never be able to think of chocolate cake in the same way again.

A movie musical adaptation of the stage musical Matilda the Musical (which is, itself, an adaptation of Dahl's book) will be released on Netflix in December 2022.