A Rigidly Brittle Defense of the Storyteller as Artist

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2004)

I know what I was supposed to be feeling as I watched "Big Fish," as Tim Burton banged me over the head with his theme on the importance of the storyteller enlivening our drab existence, but he was so insistent and rigid in this that I thought the whimsy and charm were drained out.

Maybe because I was more won over more by Billy Crudup as the cynical son living in the real world than Albert Finney as the tale-spinner who straddles reality and fantasy with Jessica Lange as his still-blonde devoted Stepford wife.
I'm a big fan of magic realism, from Bedford Falls to even "Neverending Story," but the fantasy elements here were too brittle, starting with Ewen MacGregor, who shows none of Finney's "Tom Jones" flare when enacting his younger self, and the preternaturally too bright smiles that everyone stiffly wears in the stories to match the too bright M & M artificial colors cinematogragraphy by Philippe Rousselot under too much make-up, including on Alison Lohman, though she eerily mimics Lange's body language as her younger self.
Part of the fantasy includes the very fake Alabama accents, which are Network Standard Southern, even though they filmed near Mobile.

I wasn't sure if it was an intentionally transitional point in the movie as the fantasy elements start to intersect with the real world that we jarringly hear for the first time period-appropriate songs with "5 O'clock World" and the Allman Brothers' "Travelin' Man." The closing song by Eddy Vedder and Pearl Jam was lovely.