Just like 2001's "Planet of the Apes" - a complete failure.

Rating: Null/10 (6 April 2004)

A fantasy film where telling tall tales should play right into Burton's strengths as a filmmaker. But for an imaginative film that relies on blowing the viewer away with fantastic scenes, I found it all too pedestrian and if you will...unimaginative. The storyline was slight and forgettable, and its sweating hard attempt to act the part of the aggressive traveling salesman to make me buy a product I didn't need with such a sugary sentimental pitch, never worked. After catching all those wild stories that blur the lines between reality and fantasy, with no tension coming forth and not anything real happening, I'm left wondering what it was all about. It would be too inane to believe that the filmmaker actually wants us to go for the bald-faced lie over anything real because it is so charmingly told, which is another way of adopting Hollywood's moneymaking code of giving the paying customers whatever they want as long as they feel entertained and the investors are happy with the box-office returns. But that is exactly what this film is about. Along with the superficial metaphors disclosed about death and love and an idyllic life, which are supposed to be poignant pronouncements for the film to cover-up all its emptiness and its attempts at doling out false hopes for those who buy into its premise.