'Tis Like a Fine Irish Tale

Rating: Null/10 (1 July 2004)

If you're Irish, you realize that the story is the key. If you're not Irish, we'll pray for you. 'Tis said that the Irish never allow the truth to get in the way of a good story. A very logical and pragmatic son has struggled with a great story teller of a dad and doesn't know fact from fiction about his father. He comes home as his father nears the end of his life and begins to investigate to try to separate the truth from the fiction in his father's tales. Tim Burton directs a wonderfully suited cast in telling this tale. As the story unfolds, the son discovers that his father isn't as crazy as he has thought and discovers a message about life that his father had been trying to pass to him. Fortunately for the son, he finds the message his father wants him to find and thus inherits a wonderful legacy of enlivening the dullness of routine existence with the wonder of fine story telling. Perhaps, for the more rational mind, the father had failed in his quest to share who he was and denied his son many years of closeness. I can certainly see that point of view. But, as a story teller myself, this movie will become one of the shining stars of my collection and I will share it with my grandchildren in the hope of widening their visions of life and their abilities to see beyond the obvious and the mundane. What a boring world it would be without great story tellers. The imagination is a wonderful thing that allows us to probe beneath the obvious. This is a wonderful film. I highly recommend it.