It has no idea what it wants to be

Rating: 2/10 (10 January 2004)

I have to start this by saying that Tim Burton has always been one of my favorite directors. I like his skewed point of view, his Edward Gorey-ish surrealism, his way he will show the not merely odd in his films but also the unpleasant, the ugly, and the weirdly bizarre, and show them in a lovable, accepting manner that makes them sometimes hauntingly fascinating. Instead of that "train wreck you can't look away from" feeling, Burton always leaves you with a voyeuristic sense that makes you want to watch his films more than once, to see the things you missed the first time. Instead of hammering away at the viewer with the weirdness of the characters, Burton lets the personalities speak for themselves; and perhaps this works because his characters have always been inherently likeable.
Not so this time with his latest effort, Big Fish.
To tell this nested set of stories, Burton assembled a cast that is top notch: Ewan McGregor as the young Edward Bloom, Albert Finney as the elderly Edward Bloom, Jessica Lange as Bloom's wife Sandra, Billy Crudup as their son William Bloom; with a host of minor roles filled by such notable performers as Robert Guillaume, Danny DeVito, Helena Bonham Carter, and Steve Buscemi. He even includes folksinger Louden Wainwright III in a not-so-invisible role, for what reason I cannot imagine, and insists on spelling his name incorrectly throughout the entire film's opening AND closing credits. This puzzled me a great deal.
In fact, I was puzzled many times throughout the film, but mostly after, when I should have been nodding and smiling, and not wanting to wait until it came out on DVD; instead, I was itching to leave the theater as soon as possible, and sat there with a distinct frown on my face when it finally ended.
Very /few/ films have made me feel as if I wanted to leave. No matter how bad a film is, I rarely walk out on it. Maybe that was the problem with Big Fish; it really isn't BAD. It's pretty. But it's also hollow. You keep watching, and watching and watching, hoping that it will eventually turn into the film you think it should be, then it ends and you realize it never will.
Basically, the story line is simple enough. Edward Bloom is a storyteller. He tells stories about his own life, and adventures, and entertains for decades with these fantastical tales--first his friends, then his wife, then his own son, William. But as William grows up, he becomes irritated with, then angry about, these "lies" that he was told. He wants to know the "real" father--the one that he can't see for all the stories that he feels act as a smokescreen. Yet, he cannot get any closer to the truth, so he falls away from his father emotionally, until his mother phones him to tell him that his father is now dying.
So William packs his suitcase and pregnant wife and moves back home to help sort out the end of his father's life. Immediately, he is faced with the same stories, the same lies, the same fantastic tales of his father's adventures, and cruelly and selfishly cuts the old man off time after time. He refuses to accept either the stories, OR the magic they contain, and most of all, the fact that they are very entertaining stories. But he is forced to remember the stories, as his father relates them to William's wife, who seems to be entranced by them, and him.
As the stories get told, we are 'treated' to them. ALL OF THEM. These are not SHORT stories. These stories are long, they are convoluted, they have many moments that make you want to question Edward as he tells them, and they contain many many MANY dead ends that lead---and this is the really frustrating part---nowhere at all. And they go on and ON.
For example, take the story about his walk down the "haunted road." Edward ploughs his way through mists, and trees that grab him (literally) and strange sounds and (ick and double ick!!) a HUGE nest of large black jumping spiders (!!) and a town that shouldn't even exist, and these things get barely a mention at all (except for the town.) The entire time, the voice-over is yammering on and on about perseverance. About ANOTHER story that was told earlier. About NOTHING. After several dozen of these sorts of scenes, you are left with a feeling that you are missing the point--if you knew where to look, maybe it would pop out at you. But it never does. Because it isn't there. You are constantly trying to reconcile what you are seeing with what you are hearing.
In fact, if you removed the soundtrack and voicetrack from this film entirely, and just WATCHED it, you'd be so puzzled you wouldn't be able to make sense of the plot--but what you /would/ have was an entirely different impression of what was really happening! This feeling of being pulled in two different directions is not only unsettling, it's highly irritating.
The film has two major flaws in addition to this. First, it is about the South--to be precise, Alabama. There is an ingrained "southernness" about the movie that needs to be there, because there are several references in it that would only make sense in the Southern U.S. Yet, Burton uses three British actors, one from New Jersey, and a New Yorker, and only ONE person has even a HINT of an Alabamian accent. He doesn't go so far as to allow his Brits to speak with their normal accents, but they don't do "Suth'n" either. And neither Albert Finney NOR Danny DeVito speak in consistent accents. Devito wavers from exaggerated hillbilly to his usual "Noo Joisey" intonation, and Finney can't decide where he's from. This smacked of really shoddy dialogue coaching, and did nothing for the continuity.

Second, the film is FAR FAR TOO LONG. It needs a good edit. The pace is snaillike, the acting sometimes seems improvised and directionless. And it just has no idea what it's supposed to be ABOUT most of the time.

There are many little oddities all through the film: a street shown briefly in one scene mirrors one seen in Edward Scissorhands; The 'martial arts' in the Chinese army scene is idiotically choreographed; the "twins" seem to change size in their various scenes, as does the giant. The "banjo man" on the porch in Spectre is not only playing the song from "Deliverance," he IS the young man who played the banjo in "Deliverance!" And why Louden Wainwright? Did Burton owe him a favor? He's no actor. He sticks out like a sore thumb among those who ARE actors.
There are things that make /no/ sense, visually OR plot-wise. Why does the kid steal shoes? Who, or what, is that naked "fish woman?" How can so many barefoot people dancing on grass make so much noise? What's up with the bits about Edward's need for water--about feeling "dry"? (He soaks in a tub, fully clothed!) Even some of the camera angles are downright awkward--as if an amateur camera operator had been given free rein to be as "arty" as he wanted to be.
And probably the weirdest one of all: Tim Burton has made another movie about someone named Edward.
None of these little items, or the other dozens of such things, are explained or illuminated in the film, especially not at the end, when one might expect them to become clear, or at least say why they cannot be clear. They are simply /there/. And they build irritation throughout the course of this very long film, and the pacing is slow, slow, slow. Never have I felt so much like getting up and leaving a film, just to take a break from it all.
This film isn't a fantasy. It's not an allegory. It's not a drama. It's not a comedy. It's not even a decent Tim Burton film! The characters aren't all that likeable or believable; if Jessica Lange had ducked and nodded and smiled ONE MORE TIME in that film, I'd have thrown a tomato at the screen. And NO ONE--I repeat NO ONE--should have to see Danny Devito NAKED, OR repeatedly watch Albert Finney slurping.
I really wanted to like this film. From the previews, it looked like an entirely different film than the one I saw. It looked lighter, more magical, more surreal. Instead, it was a hodge-podge of bad writing, uncertain goals, unexplained events and senseless details. It just didn't gel.