Big Fish: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

(Originally published 2003)

Tim Burton's “Big Fish” tells the tall tale of Edward Bloom (Albert Finney), a dying salesman whose charmed life, recounted from his deathbed, proves a colorful confection of bigger-than-life stories, some legitimately lived, others overtly embellished, most drifting somewhere in between.

The movie, Burton’s 10th, was adapted by John August from Daniel Wallace’s novel, and it plays to Burton’s strengths as an auteur of fantasy colliding with reality. Just as in the recent “Cold Mountain,” the film is a contemporary version of “The Odyssey,” albeit this time out, that version is a bit more fantastic in the telling.

Its opening moments, for instance, are a lark of human propulsion. They find Edward reminiscing about his own spectacular birth, which found him rocketing from his mother’s womb, literally shooting from her loins and hurtling down a hospital corridor on his back, where his gathering momentum was stubbed by a nurse.

Later, itching to get out of the small pond of his Alabama backwater and experience the bigger riches of the world, Edward (played in his youth by Ewan McGregor) is greeted by new friends and adventures--the likes of which make for grand storytelling.

There’s Karl, the misunderstood giant who doesn’t quite fit into the world; a shrewish witch (Helena Bonham Carter) whose glass eye reveals to Edward his own death; his future wife, Sandra (Alison Lohman and Jessica Lane), whom Edward meets while shoveling a year’s worth of manure at the circus; and the conjoined twins he saves after parachuting into China during World War II.

In spite of these oddball scenes--and the countless others that weave around them--“Big Fish” doesn’t rise to the quirky greatness of Burton’s best films, “Edward Scissorhands,” “Ed Wood” and “Beatlejuice.” It’s more measured, less daring, never as dark, eschewing any trace of an edge in favor of embracing a sunny, whimsical charm.

If this is the director at his most grown up, then it’s also Burton at his most obvious, with the core of his film centered around Edward’s shaky relationship with his son, Will (Billy Crudup), a bitter journalist with no humor or imagination who resents his scene-stealing father for creating a life that’s essentially a lie.

For most, Edward’s tales are harmless fun. But for Will, who resents his father’s grandstanding, they’ve created a tug of war between them that centers on the necessity of telling the truth versus the necessity of telling stories. Predictably, Burton favors the latter, with his movie branching off in a dozen different directions to make his point.

“Big Fish” is perhaps best enjoyed in its parts rather than in its whole; it might be too episodic for its own good. Still, it’s consistently watchable, with fine performances from Finney, Lane and McGregor, lush cinematography from Philippe Rousselot, and a score from Burton’s longtime collaborator, Danny Elfman, that’s every bit as mystical as Dennis Gassner’s production design.

Grade: B