Complete non-event. Bring a pillow.

Rating: Null/10 (9 February 2004)

(INCLUDES SPOILERS)
I've just seen this film and it is the most disappointing film I have seen for many years. I haven't read the book and apart from one trailer I had heard nothing about the film so had no particular expectations. However when the film started up with Ewan McGregor putting on an American accent, I had a bad feeling about the film that never really went away.
The film alternates between the present day where Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) is trying to get to know the truth about his dying father Edward (Albert Finney). Edward has told elaborate tales all his life and Will feels he doesn't really know his father as he cannot seperate the truth from fiction. So Will sets about trying to find the truth about his father, and meanwhile we see Ewan McGregor as the young Edward Bloom, reenacting the tales that the old man tells, basically exaggerated versions of his life story. So the framework is set that this is going to be a film about reality, we know that what we see may sometimes be real and sometimes just stories.
The problem with this film is that it didn't really know what it was trying to achieve.
To me, it never really investigated this idea about story versus reality enough to make it interesting. The Ewan McGregor bits came across just as stories and we never really know, or perhaps care, how much of those stories is real (although there are some pretty hefty clues at the end)
Some of the stories are exaggerated to be almost ridiculous... A sheep-eating giant, a car stuck atop a tree, a witch with a magic eye, a giant fish that appears as a beautiful woman... But the point of this is lost.. the embellishments are never quite funny enough to make you laugh, as a comedy this film doesn't work because it's not quite funny, and when it does strange & impossible things there never seems to be a reason for it.
On a character level, it doesn't work because we never truly get to care about any of the characters.. The young Edward (McGregor) seems different in each story and because these are just stories, we never feel like we're really getting to know him. The old Edward (Finney) is quite one-dimensional, we never really get inside his head as to why he does tell these stories or live his life that way. Most of the other characters are just extras, there to push the story along, the only interesting character who does any development is Will, the son who learns to appreciate his father's way of thinking, finally telling him a story instead of just being logical - thus letting his father die a happy man.
I should say that I would not fault the acting, the three main actors are all very good, especially Albert Finney, and there are some great supporting performances, particularly from Helena Bonham Carter. I just think that no amount of good acting could have made us care about these characters based on the poor script & story presented to us.
On a drama/plot level this film doesn't work because we already know that everything we see has already happened - so we know "it'll all be alright". Even the fact that Edward is dying is introduced very early on so there is no suspense or surprise there. I can only think of two points in the whole thing where the story was actually interesting and drew you in at all - firstly the young Edward's return to & rebuilding of the town of Spectre, and secondly the part where Will tells his father the story of how he will die.
The rest of the film was completely tedious - I didn't get drawn in, I didn't care what happened next (besides which the stories were fairly disjointed anyway). I seriously considered leaving the film at more than a couple of points. The film just completely failed to connect with me.
As a romance it didn't work, there were two main relationships - Sandra and Edward, and Will and his young French wife. Will's relationship was never explored in any depth, his wife's character was quite flat (although Marion Cotillard did an admirable job on very sparse material) The Ewan McGregor/Alison Lohman relationship has a great deal of potential, Alison Lohman is quite dazzling as the young Sandra, but the beginning of their relationship is never properly explored. It ends up looking like the young Edward just had a crush on her and she accepted him because he was better than her previous high-school thug boyfriend. As an old couple there is clearly a real spark between them (Albert Finney and Jessica Lange, Lange is particularly good at showing her character's devotion to her husband) but we never really get to appreciate how this came about.. it ends up slipping in to the stereotypical "white picket fence"/"living the american dream" type cheesiness.
There was supposedly a lot of "magic" about the film, with some scenes more fitting in fairy tales (witches, giants etc) and some special film treating techniques to give some scenes an unreal quality. But even as a "magical adventure" type of film this was left wanting. As the mystical bits are few and far between, with no clear reason for them to happen and no connections between them.
At times I felt like maybe they were trying to have some deeper message behind the film, maybe something like "you have to have fantasies in your life and have fun, don't just be logical" or "you can do whatever you want with your life, life is what you make it" but these sorts of ideas were only vaguely explored, and are fairly un-original - there were no interesting ideas or theories put across, nothing to really make you think or get stuck into. It didn't even fully commit to the standard american dream type hollywood ending, which it hinted at at times at least that would have been consistent.
All in all the film left me feeling numb and completely devoid of emotion. It didn't make me laugh, it didn't make me cry, it didn't make me think, it didn't make me smile, above all it didn't make me care about anything that happened. The film had no clear goals and as a result, succeeded in achieving absolutely nothing.
It's straight into my "worst films of all time" list, along with Damage, Guest House Paradiso, Timecode, Full Frontal and Pret-a-Porter. Even "The Postman" was better than this, sure it was full of pro-American mumbo-jumbo but at least it had a story that kept you interested!