Beautiful but too corny at times.

Rating: 7/10 (10 June 2006)

"Big Fish", as most people know, is a Tim Burton film. Tim Burton proved himself a great director with movies like "Edward Scissorhands" and the recent "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". So when I sat down to watch "Big Fish", I expected magical and enchanting characters to float out of my screen and set my imagination off to a different planet. But it seriously disappointed me and here's why.
The movie is about William Bloom (Billy Crudup), a married man with a baby on the way, who finds out that his father, Edward (Albert Finney), is dying. He returns home to see him as he feels very distant from his father and wants to reconnect with him before he dies. The reason he is so distant from his father is because his dad is always telling exaggerated stories of his magical past and William doesn't appreciate the fact that his dad can't be normal and serious like everyone else. (I know, what an idiot.) Most of the movie shows us Edward Bloom's wonderful tales, with Ewan McGregor acting as young Edward (with a Southern accent!). So the story is basically about William Bloom trying to decode his father's complicated past. What he's really trying to do though, subconsciously, is to prove his father wrong about his "made-up" past, so that he can rightfully accuse his father of being a liar since everything he ever said was just triggered by his wild imagination.
So that's my first negative point. I hated the concept of getting all teary-eyed over a guy who can't connect with his dad. Alright, so it's nice to have an old man tell stories of his past but why add on tasteless, corny sequences of sons and fathers fighting and not talking for three years and then meeting in a hospital as the father is dying and etc., etc.!? WHY RUIN SUCH A (potentially) WONDERFUL MOVIE? The magical characters of Edward Bloom's stories were all amazing, though. Danny Devito played an eccentric circus owner while they got a real-life giant man to play the Giant in the movie. Also, Danny Elfman was great with the music as usual and Burton did an *ASTOUNDING* job with the visual effects. The only thing that TOTALLY ruined the movie for me was the corny Hollywood plot. But two thumbs up, to quote my fellow reviewers Siskel & Ebert, for everything else, especially the casting.