uneven but ultimately moving

Rating: Null/10 (15 May 2004)

`Big Fish' is the latest bit of calculated whimsy from famed director Tim Burton. With a screenplay by John August based on the Daniel Wallace novel, Burton tells the tale of Edward Bloom, a man whose whole life has been one `big fish story' after another. Now old and facing death, Bloom needs to come up with a rousing finale to cap off his largely fictionalized life. Bloom's son, William, a realist and pragmatist, bitterly resents the `lies' his father has been feeding him ever since he was a boy, and yearns, in these last moments together, to hear the `true' story of the old man's life. But, in his investigation into the veracity of all the tall tales he's been told, William discovers that there may be more truth to these myths and legends than he has ever allowed himself to believe. He also realizes that, in debunking all the whoppers, he will be depriving his father of the one real trait that defines him as a person and that distinguishes him from everybody else.
The title of the film actually functions on two symbolic levels simultaneously. On the one hand, it reflects the fictionalized nature of Bloom's life and the grandiose egotism of his character. On the other, Bloom is, himself, the `big fish' in a small pond, as he leaves his mark on the world around him. `Big Fish' is actually most effective in the scenes set in the present, as father and son come to terms with the quality that each dislikes most about the other. William feels deceived by a father who, despite the fact that he made himself appear to be a larger-than-life heroic figure, was actually just a mediocre, often-absent dad, too busy with his secret `fantasy' life to make time for his own lonely son (the story has strong echoes of `Death of a Salesman' in its underlying vision and theme). Bloom, in a similar way, finds his son lacking in the kind of large-scale imagination that Bloom feels makes life worth living.
The film is considerably less successful in the `flashback' scenes tracing Bloom's life from his own birth to his son's early childhood. The scenes are all elaborately staged in the best Tim Burton manner  filled with hauntingly mythical settings, surrealistic events and doses of Magic Realism - but the filmmakers can't overcome the unfortunate fact that these sequences are essentially as uninteresting and irritating as real `fish stories' tend to be. Bloom's `adventures' come across as dime-novel vignettes, which is supposed to be the point, I guess, but it still means that we are squirming with impatience through large  indeed very large  stretches of the film. Every time we come back to the present  to real, flesh-and-blood human beings  our interest picks back up. That's why the film, in its latter stages, becomes such a moving and profound experience, as we finally get to see and know the real man who is Edward Bloom, wrinkles, warts and all.
Burton has assembled a wonderful cast for the occasion. The marvelous Albert Finney plays the dying Bloom and invests the film with an emotional depth just by his mere presence in the role. Ewan MacGregor does a fine job as the young, idealistic Bloom, while Jessica Lange and Alison Lohman enact the parts of Bloom's wife present and past (MacGregor and Lohman look as if they could truly grow up to be Finney and Lange). Billy Crudup brings a subtle depth to the role of William and the scenes between him and Finney truly touch the heart. Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Buscemi and Danny De Vito round out the impressive cast.
Maybe it says more about me than it does about the film that I ended up liking the parts that were the LEAST Burton-esque the best. But, then again, this is from someone who thinks that the comparatively earthbound `Ed Wood' is Burton's best film.