BIG FISH IS CANNED IN ITS OWN SACCHARINE

Rating: 3/10 (13 December 2003)

Some Spoilers
Billy Crudup is estranged from his charming father Albert Finney because he resents being used as part of his father's habitual tall tales. Years later working in France, Crudup gets a call from his Mother, Jessica Lange, that Dad isn't going to make it. Crudup and his dutiful pregnant wife head back home so that he can try to understand the man his father really is. Earnest Crudup must sort out the real man from the tall tales he was told before his impending death. One can smell the life lessons a mile away and the 'heartfelt', golden lit redemption that will be trotted out on a gigantic scale long before it happens.
This being a Tim Burton (great believer in misenscene as the star of most of his directorial efforts) film we dutifully sit through over-produced, colorful flashbacks featuring a young Finney as played with nauseating earnestness and a wide-eyed can-do chutzpah by Ewan MacGregor. The flashbacks resemble skits from the Muppet Show with their overblown hyperbolic imagery and cutesy art direction. Each story within the main frame of the film reeks of obvious symbolism and tiresome morality lessons. So shallow is MacGregor's goody-two shoes character and the seemingly endless good deeds he chirpingly performs one wants to ask Mr. Burton to please stop begging for our approval and get on with the central narrative.

When the narrative finally emerges from its steady stream of narrative side trips to soft-focus fantasy lands and we deal with the pending reality of Finney's impending death - there is virtually nothing to care about. Crudup has a thankless task of being the doubting son of the tale teller. Frankly, there is no forward motion to Crudup's character and he learns nothing. Finney, a consumate professional, spends most of his time choking through illness or smiling, with benign crust, his all knowing grin. Lange is completely wasted doing a 'dutiful southern belle wife with no personality' turn and speaks about 8 lines which consist mostly of `did you get enough to eat honey' sentences. There's a large cast of celebrities who play colorful but unmemorable roles and run about as if lost in a Fellini film as Big Fish moves into its sudsy final act.
The deliberate tear-jerking and low brow attempts and humanism only result in laughable Hollywood schmaltz that is absolutely relentless in force. Clearly, in the final sequences of the film it is as if the swelling music, 'warm-hearted' characters, and gauzy cinemtography have been orchestrated with the sole intent of wringing tears from even the most jaded of brick walls. CRY DAMN YOU, CRY!!! The brow-beating self importance of Big Fish is pure 'high-concept' filmmaking at its most manipulative.

For a few of the audience members at my screening last week (kleenex wiping away their tears), maybe your aunt Gladys, her henpecked husband Phil and 'special' cousin Jimmy with the slow eye, Big Fish is what they might call a `goooooood moovie'. For the rest of us, bring a large barf bag and keep your seat belt fastened at all times. If anything, it will be so much fun to watch the sanctimonious Oscar chatter this stinkeroo will raise. Oh the humanity!