"So it's a tall tale?" "Well, it's not a short one..."

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 2004)

In an episode of "Tiny Toon Adventures" where the students of Acme Looniversity are showing the movies they made in film class, everyone expects Gogo Dodo's entry to be full-on wackiness - instead it's a (relatively) restrained live-action tale about two people dancing (actually a drastically edited-down version of one of the Joe McDoakes short subjects, "So You Want To Learn To Dance"); when Babs complains, Gogo argues that he can't be expected to stay to type all the time.
This, I think, is what's behind general critical response in the UK to "Big Fish" - there's no acid here, no full-on weirdness, no dark, edgy atmosphere... it's more sentimental than most of Tim Burton's other movies, but does that make it bad? Or does that make it his most personal movie since "Edward Scissorhands," and certainly a return to form after his sojourn to the "Planet of the Apes"? I'll go for the latter; he's always shown some warmth in his best work when you think about it - it's just that this time it's for "normal" people. You could almost say that it's his lightest movie since "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" (another movie about an odyssey and the people the hero meets on the way).
The movie's part a father-son drama and part the "Forrest Gump"-ish odyssey of a man through life, as told by the older man (Albert Finney) to those around him; everyone loves his stories except his serious-minded son (Billy Crudup), who's never really gotten over his dad's tendency to prefer a good yarn to the truth. But he's not so estranged that he doesn't come home from Paris with his wife to be by his ill father's side; for a lot of the movie John August's adaptation of Daniel Wallace's book can't quite find a satisfactory balance between the relationship between father and son and the tales the former tells about his life, which may or may not be total lies (it's not until near the end of the movie that we [sort of] find out for sure), but that's okay because Finney's story is so involving we wind up caring about him and the bond with his son anyway.
Burton's empathy with the strange (a giant, a circus owner with a secret, a mysterious little town) is coupled with his gift to make the bizarre seem everyday, plus Ewan McGregor's performance - his shifting accent notwithstanding - to make this journey fun and touching, even if it does seem almost as fragmented as "Catch Me If You Can" (though the usual Tim Burton "Story? What story?" approach is reined in for once). It must be said that it's not as emotional as the wonderful "Forrest Gump" was (hang cool, detached irony, I LOVE that movie), and Helena Bonham Carter manages to overact in one of her two roles - the one which doesn't require any dialogue, oddly enough - but like the characters in the movie, you could go on the journeys the man describes forever.
"Big Fish" has a fine supporting cast (Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman, Danny DeVito, Robert Guillaume, the marvellous Steve Buscemi, the Tai twins...), striking images, and another wonderful Danny Elfman score - Elfman's finale music combines with what comprises said finale to make it a super finish to the tale - but ultimately the story is what makes this movie. Whether or not you see the movie as one big tall tale, by the end we truly see the man as a big fish - one in a big pond; it's a movie about being an individual that doesn't go out of its way to damn everyone for not being as wonderful. It won't work for the shoegazers of the world, but that wasn't Burton's aim here.