A pleasant surprise

Rating: 8/10 (27 November 2007)

Big Fish is an interesting movie for me to review. For one thing, it is directed by Tim Burton, and I generally don't like Tim Burton's movies. (What he did to Charlie and the Choclolate Factory was despicable in my opinion) But Big Fish did something that I thought any Tim Burton movie would never do: make me think that this was an enjoyable movie. Big Fish stars Ewan McGregor (Star Wars Episodes 1-3, The Island, Black Hawk Down) as Edward Bloom, a man who considers himself to be a big fish in a small pond, hence the title of the movie. Now, the story of Big Fish is told on two fronts: the first front being Edward Bloom as an old man in the present day dying from cancer, telling his son's wife all of these stories of his own youth, however, the son believes that the stories that his father tells are nothing but lies, and this whole part of the movie is the son, William, trying to know more about his father by getting his father to tell him the truth about his life before his eventual death, The second front is told in the late 1950s and mid 1960s with the young Edward Bloom living these stories that the older version of Edward Bloom is telling, even though the stories told are pretty exaggerated. There are also nice cameos of Helena Bonham Carter, Danny DeVito, and Steve Buscemi. I thought that Big Fish was a very good movie, and it easily earns a place on my Top 100 Movies of All Time list. Now this movie does suffer from a few weaknesses. One weakness is the fact that the movie has the same Burton-style animation, and I have never really been that big of a fan of his animation style. The second weakness is that I personally thought that there was a little bit of deadweight. However, I find these weaknesses to be pretty minimal. I'm surprised that this movie only got a very limited release when it first came out, because I think that it would have done very well in the theaters. Overall, Big Fish is a very nice movie, and it really surprised me, because I loved this movie. I give Big Fish 8.5 stars out of 10, and if you see it at your local video store, I say pick it up and give it a chance. It could very well worth your while.