Big fish grabs you: Hook, line and sinker.

Rating: Null/10 (18 January 2004)

It's the life of a salesman wrapped in a fairy tale that absolutely delights. The premise: If you knew how you were going to die . . . what you'd be doing, where you'd be, who you'd be with at the moment of passing  how would you live? Would you shun that situation like the plague; be the bravest guy in town in all other things? Big Fish earned an 8 / 10 from me for taking me down that road.
This salesman (Finney) is a salesman / storyteller distanced from his son ostensibly for telling tall tales and stepping on the kid's moments growing up. So what did that salesman see in that witch's eye when he was a kid anyway?
Listen, who hasn't dressed the facts to dress an otherwise boring story? This is a film about perspective  perspective in life. If 3 people are in a 7-11 hold-up, the police will hear multiple versions of `what happened' sure as shootin'. Your eyes - my eyes (your mind vs. mine) see events uniquely based on the sum of our personal experiences. Positive, negative, surrealistic spins come into play. The raconteur's art is his voice, passion; the details told vs. intrigue born by those withheld  it all counts. Stories retold consistently become myth; myth : legend. If you believe the legend, you're psychotic or blessed, depending on your audience's perspective. Big Fish teaches you how to do it right.
On that `10" scale, more than one `5' and `6' moments come along. A stingier editor would have decorated the floor with many more frames. But those cuts would have been a mistake. Its ending works (ranking a `20' on that 10 scale) because the story meanders. Big fish had me hook, line and sinker.