If you like drama, go see "Big Fish." If you like comedy, go see "Big Fish." If you like fantasy, go see "Big Fish." If you like little kids, old men, small Southern towns, big city dreams, love stories, war stories, tall tales, nostalgia, or just really good movies, GO SEE "BIG FISH."
In his latest triumph director Tim Burton brilliantly lends his flare for the fantastic to the moving story of a son's search to understand his father before it's too late. "Big Fish" follows William Bloom (the dreamy Billy Crudup) as he returns to his boyhood home to visit his dying father (Albert Finney), who William hasn't spoken with in three years.
While the elder Bloom's tall tales of his adventures have garnered him the respect and admiration of many, they are precisely what has led to the rift between him and his son, whose disillusionment has led William to question the father he once adored. Over the course of the film, in William's attempts to dismantle the myth and understand the man that is his father, the viewer is exposed to both, and the result is exquisite.
The plot itself is hardly rocket-science, but the execution is genius. Burton builds on the basic story of a father and son's search to understand one another by interspersing it with the tall tales that compose the elder Bloom's creatively enhanced autobiography.
There's the fish story, the witch story, the giant story, the war story, and countless others. Each cute and creative anecdote has its own cast of characters, its own punch-lines, its own mini-morals, but all relate back to the question of what reality is. In the construction of a person's identity and personal history, is it fact or feeling that matters more, and who should get to make that choice? These are the loaded questions that Burton explores.
The film's cast is wonderful. All of the leads are incredibly strong. As Edward Bloom the younger in the fantastical flashbacks that compose a great deal of the film, Ewan McGregor is adorable. The viewer can't help but be charmed by his sweet Southern drawl, his down-home demeanor and his endearing sincerity. As the elder Edward, Finney's performance is convincing. The scene between him and wife Sandra (Jessica Lange) is even more tender than it looks in the previews. As the disillusioned William, Crudup is genuine and heart-felt.
As for the ladies, Lange was a good solid choice to play the senior Sandra Bloom, and Alison Lohman is lovely as her younger counterpart (and the resemblance between the two of them is really quite striking).
Helena Bonham Carter -- who is ingeniously cast as two characters, both the witch and Jenny -- shows her versatility. As an actress she has an inherently eerie and larger-than-life quality about her that makes her perfect for this type of film.
"Big Fish" also has some wonderful cameos. Steve Buschemi's turn as Norther Winslow is excellent and Danny Devito was an appropriate candidate to play the sleazy circus-master Amos Calloway.
Visually, the film is absolutely incredible. The cinematography is excellent and the composition and use of special effects is clever and fittingly matched with the tones of the various stories. Burton proves once again that he is one of Hollywood's foremost creative talents.
He doesn't just direct stories; he projects emotions. He illustrates the characters' feelings in beautiful, extreme, romanticized Technicolor. Just the way Edward Bloom tells his stories, Burton pays more attention to sentiment than logistics, and his product is unparalleled. Burton is truly a visionary.
What makes "Big Fish" stand above and beyond Burton's previous works is the film's unique and powerful combination of his imaginative story-telling ability on the one hand and the emotional depth of the story-line, as is well illustrated by the film's cast, on the other. Reduced to its bare bones, "Big Fish" is just a story about pushing someone off of his pedestal, and then hoisting him back up again. But the actual film is so much more than that. It is tender, it is funny, and above all it is creative. Both Burton and Bloom say screw reality, and in doing so reach and portray a greater "truth," that is, life the way we want to remember it. Theirs is a simple message, but it is executed in a beautifully complex manner, and it is the combination of the two that makes the film so very wonderful.
Five stars.
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