Brilliant movie, if you're deep enough to 'get it'

Rating: 9/10 (18 April 2006)

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS AFTER THE FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS
This is an absolutely brilliant thought-provoking movie. It's unique and original and very thoughtful. It's about how people view their lives and the accomplishments they made therein. The basic storyline is about a father who keeps on telling tall tales about his past, which frustrates his son, who wants to hear the truth about his father.
This is really one of those movies you're either gonna love or you're gonna hate. People walk out of this one either thinking "Wow! that was brilliant, I gotta watch it again" or going "What the @#$%! was that all about!".
It's got a similar theme as 'Secondhand Lions', about a man nearing death trying to make sense of his life. The only way he finds comfort in his past is to fabricate all these tall tales that make it sound like he had this heroic and glorious past, while in reality he led a pretty average life. But to the father it doesn't matter whether the stories are false or slightly exaggerated, because often in life it's not really about what is true or not, it's more what we feel or believe in any particular situation. So even if he hadn't done all those heroic things, he feels that he would've done them given the chance, or thats what he really wanted to do.
The son, however, doesn't understand that. He wants to communicate with his real father, not with some seemingly illusionary superhero. Yet what he fails to understand is that that superhero character is his dad, because that's the way he chose to live and view his own life. Only towards the end does the son begin to understand and accept that, after the doctor at the hospital so poignantly remarks "I don't know about you, but I kinda liked your father's version of the story better".
Aside from all that the movie's got some great lines, and the fantasy-land world created in the movie is a great mix of the real and the surreal. I didn't like the real slow pace of the film, but hey, I guess that's to be expected from a movie of this caliber.