I don't see how this movie got an 8 out of 10...

Rating: Null/10 (30 April 2004)

It would be strong to say that I hated the movie, and maybe my expectations were too high going into it, but other than the story being a pretty original idea, I didn't really like it and wasn't entertained much at all. I hadn't seen this in the theater and as soon as it came out on DVD I checked IMDB for ratings & reviews. When I saw that it had got 8 out of 10 rating, plus it was a father son / fantasy movie, I raced over to blockbuster to rent it thinking for sure I would have liked it. Sadly enough and to my surprise, it did nothing for me. I did watch it pretty late in the day and found myself yawning and wondering when it would pick up, but in my opinion any good movie would keep me awake no matter what time I watch it.
As I said, it had a pretty original story, and the acting was certainly believable. For me though I had a hard time just simply enjoying the fantasy and imagination of the stories and how they unfolded when instead I focused on the credibility of them and the damage it was causing to his son. Don't get me wrong I am a movie freak and my favorite movies are action, Sci-Fi, fantasy, and horror, so I depend heavily on the make believe. I like a good drama too, but in this movie, I think too because I am a father, I sided more with the son in that, I just saw him as a terrible father, possibly terrible husband too. I kept thinking to myself, now here's a guy who apparently wasn't satisfied with his normal life so he creates this second life, most of which is fantasy, but you don't really know which is fact and fiction. But because he was a good story teller and such a social person, the stories were enjoyed by most rather than just passed off as a pathological liar. I might have been able to get in the spirit of that, but his son resented him for it and I guess so did I. I think too it struck to close to home for me as it reminded me partly of my own father in that I can't ask the guy what time it is without him telling me how to build a clock. Or if I try to tell him about something, he'll interrupt me and go off on some tangent story himself. Another pet peeve of mine is that it pains me to see parents mistreat there kids or tell them lies and from one perspective that's all this movie is about. In one scene the son told his father that he didn't know anything about the real him because all he got were these fantasy stories rather than stories of how his father really was. And because he too was going to become a father he wanted his son to know the real him. In this scene I cried out `Amen!' But in the end (which was pretty un-climactic), because his father was dying and more or less to make piece with him, the son reluctantly told him a story of how he dies, or moves on I should say.
I guess another issue that bothered me was that the father was always seen as a man who was a good person and who helped others out because he was such a good person. And here he ended up buying up a whole town (which appeared to be a true story) in order to preserve it. But again rather than admiring him for that I kept thinking, that his son and wife never saw him because he was too busy working and keeping up this other life. It's kind of like feeding others when your own family starves, and I guess that's the feeling that I came away with on this movie. It shocks me quite frankly that it received 8 out of 10 as very few movies hit that mark. I have thought that Tim Burton's past movies have been really good, this one just didn't sit too well with me. But as it stands now, it's in the top 250 movies of all time (shocking), so it must be worth a watch. Hope you like it and get more out of it than I did.