Unique And Beautifully Interwoven Tragic Fantasy Of Father-Son Relationship

Rating: 7/10 (31 March 2008)

Will Bloom is a man from Alabama whose father is dying. The father is a teller of tall tales and the son feels both overshadowed by him and unaware of who his Dad really is. When they meet for the last time, can Will finally embrace the imagination and fantasies which form such a crucial part of his father's character ?
I'm a sucker for movies which explore the boundaries between reality and fantasy (Drop Dead Fred, Labyrinth, Dreamchild) and this one is beautifully written and directed. It contains all the wonderful and imaginative visuals Burton is known for, but is also at heart a family drama about a son reconciling with his father. It balances and interweaves its timelines and subplots with consummate skill and the wordless funeral sequence at the end - where Will discovers his father may have exaggerated but didn't lie - is a perfect finale. The hardest thing to do with this kind of material is make it seamless; Ed's stories have so many strong individual ideas - a witch in the woods, a lonely giant, a lost town, love at first sight, a circus ringmaster who happens to be a werewolf, a bank raid, a World War II secret mission, a Siamese Twins song-and-dance act - and yet Burton spins these into the main narrative without ever losing the strength of the characters. Everybody in the movie is great, though I especially like DeVito as Amos and McGrory as the giant Karl (sadly, this amazing looking actor died in 2005). It also has a typically brilliant score by Danny Elfman which pulls all the emotion out of the screen, and terrific production design by the gifted Dennis Gassner (Miller's Crossing, Road To Perdition); at one point McGrory pushes Bonham Carter's deliciously crooked house over until it's straight. Like all of Burton's work, this movie is bursting with imagination and entertainment value, but it's also a much deeper character study than usual, and a touchingly sobering comment on how families need to work to encompass their differences. Shot all over Alabama and based on the book Big Fish: A Novel Of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace, who has a cameo as the college lecturer.