Big Fish (2003)
Directed by Tim Burton
Throughout his life Edward Bloom has always been a man of big appetites, enormous passions and tall tales. In his later years, he remains a huge mystery to his son, William. Now, to get to know the real man, Will begins piecing together a true picture of his father from flashbacks of his amazing adventures.
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25 films that influenced Big Fish
What critics say influenced Big Fish
What is meant to be a wondrous tale, a big-fish story that evokes the spirit of "Forrest Gump" and displays Burton's surrealistic imagery and set design, is a disappointingly dull thud of a fantasy.
These two themes it lamely tries to spin for two long and charmless hours, somewhat like "Forrest Gump" on a high colonic.
Some viewers will no doubt compare Big Fish to the overrated Forrest Gump, but the two films could not differ more.
I’ll admit I deemed this as a “Forrest Gump” rip-off from the trailer, but I was pleasantly surprised by this tale of tall tales translated through such a grim story such as a father’s inability to communicate with his son, an amazing and beautiful film with Burton’s usual oddities and weird characters followed by his masterful use of odd special effects glossed over by a dreamy hazey point of view within the fantasies and tall tales of life and love.
Critics have already been comparing Tim Burton’s new film Big Fish to Forrest Gump, which is somewhat of a mis-association.
Is that because, like the similar fabulation in Forrest Gump, it offers a profoundly meretricious portrait of the US from the Depression to, roughly, the present?
.Albert Finney made his film debut in 1960's “The Entertainer” opposite Laurence Olivier Rated PG-13 for fleeting nudity and mild violence.
On the surface, this is a wonderful tale beautifully caught on film by director of photography Philippe Rousselot, who won an Oscar for his work on 1993's "A River Runs Through It." His cinematography, combined with Burton's exquisite imagination, helps this film sweep you -- visually and emotionally -- into an alternate universe.
Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot rediscovers the dappled Americana of his work on A River Runs Through It and, on occasion, the darker American gothic of his work on Flesh and Bone , and Coen Brothers production designer Dennis Gassner provides a look carefully pitched in a liminal space between eternal and familiar.
The idea that Big Fish is some kind of turning point towards maturity for Tim Burton (a mid-life crisis like backhanded observation that also befell Steven Spielberg with Hook) is for thumbnosed critics unable to grasp that Burton has been making adult fairy-tales all the way back to Pee-Wee�s Big Adventure.
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Burton has brought such unique style to each of his films most notably the first two Batman films, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas (which he produced), and I'll add my personal favorite Sleepy Hollow so much style that the Burton name is essentially a stamp of quality.
Failure in editorial pace and decision-making is, arguably, Burton's most obvious weakness as a director--undermining the effectiveness of his beautiful grotesques and alluring tableaux (most notably in Batman and the frankly unsalvageable Planet of the Apes ), and, in this instance, muting the performances of a cast that finds only the vaguely drab Crudup to be lacking.
Instead of being oppressively dark (like so many films before like “Batman,” “Sleepy Hollow” and even “Planet of the Apes”), “Big Fish” is vibrant and colorful.
A Burton film focuses on the absent parent such as Beetlejuice featuring a girl more comfortable with a pair of ghosts over her parents or Batman where the hero lashes out in vigilantism against the death of his parents.
It's based on Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace and directed by renowned auteur, Tim Burton, known for his dark and unconventional takes on such works as "Batman" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
Within that format, he has been almost entirely successful, from his feature debut at age 26, the cult classic Pee-wee's Big Adventure, to his blockbuster Batman films and his masterworks Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood.
The movie culminates with a beautifully directed sequence that recalls, oddly and pleasurably, both Spike Lee's 25th Hour and Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry.
This is true of dozens of other films, of course, but in the case of Planet of the Apes, Tim Burton was at the helm, and yet the film lacked any of the dark humor and complexity that raised the likes of Batman and Beetlejuice (and to a lesser degree Mars Attacks! and Sleepy Hollow ) above the level of vacuous multiplex fodder.
Although he’s made a handful of undisputed cult classics (BeetleJuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood), more often than not his films are packed with wonderful visuals and ideas yet, somehow, they don’t quite work (Mars Attacks!, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Planet of the Apes).
It's not as good as, say, "Beetlejuice," Edward Scissorhands" or "Ed Wood," but way better than "Mars Attacks" and "Planet of the Apes."
Stocked to the gills with glorious visuals and delightful whimsy, "Fish" is a reassuring return to form for director Tim Burton, who created some of the most original films of the 1980s and 1990s (including "Edward Scissorhands," "Beetlejuice" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas").
Wreathing it are countless shoes hanging from a telephone wire, and when Edward is invited to remain forever in this post-Beetlejuice resting place, he says, without too much regret, that he isnt planning on settling anywhere real soon.
Burton’s best work – Ed Wood springs to mind, and Beetlejuice as well – marries mordant humor to twisted love stories (and what was Ed Wood but a man locked in an abusive relationship with the very nature of cinema itself?) and spooky, borderline mad visual grace notes that linger in the mind’s eye forever after.
After directing such impersonal projects as "Sleepy Hollow" and "Planet of the Apes", it is refreshing to see Tim Burton directing a project that he clearly has an emotional investment in again (Burtons own father, whom he admits that he didnt have the closest relationship with, died a couple of years ago and he recently became a father himself for the first time).
After the visually inventive but dreary Sleepy Hollow and the across-the-board awful Planet of the Apes, Tim Burton returns to more familiar quirky territory with Big Fish, an ebullient tall tale about the magic of imagination and the power of myth.
This is true of dozens of other films, of course, but in the case of Planet of the Apes, Tim Burton was at the helm, and yet the film lacked any of the dark humor and complexity that raised the likes of Batman and Beetlejuice (and to a lesser degree Mars Attacks! and Sleepy Hollow ) above the level of vacuous multiplex fodder.
Instead of being oppressively dark (like so many films before like “Batman,” “Sleepy Hollow” and even “Planet of the Apes”), “Big Fish” is vibrant and colorful.
Tim Burton (''Pee-Wee's Big Adventure''/''Edward Scissorhands''/"Sleepy Hollow"/"Ed Wood") one of filmdom's more prolific directors is known for his visual flair and storytelling ability, which is considered innovative, imaginative, whimsical, and at times even impishly perverse.
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Does the probable success of "Big Fish" (which has been touted for months as potential Oscar bait) mean that the Tim Burton who gave us such anarchistic gems as "Beetlejuice" and "Mars Attacks!" (which is still one of the funniest and most underrated films of the 1990s) is going to go the way of Robert Zemeckis-another director who abandoned the zany absurdist attitude that he developed in such films as"Used Cars" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" after scoring an Oscar for "Forrest Gump" to make blander films like "Contact" or "Cast Away"?
Although such a mindset demonstrates the notoriously short memories of the entertainment press (either they forgot that his wonderful 1994 film "Ed Wood" already proved that or they decided that since it wasnt a box-office success, it simply didnt count), it fails to answer the important question: do we really want or need a fully mature Tim Burton in the first place?
The ultimate fish-out-of-water tale Edward Scissorhands explores the theme of absent fathers in more stark contrast than this new effort does, and if we're searching for Burton himself, there's more direct parallels to the outsider career of Ed Wood.
But my guess is - and I have nothing concrete to back this up other than recollection - that these are the same critics who said Sleepy Hollow was disingenuous to Washington Irving's vision of Hessian tall tales (Quite the opposite; it was a natural extension of Inving's story) or that the only genuine aspect of Ed Wood was Martin Landau.
The dreamy and imaginative visuals of Big Fish are definitely on par with those of Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood , but what distinguishes his effort here is that visual world and the fantasies told by Edward are a complete complement to each other.
Tim Burton (''Pee-Wee's Big Adventure''/''Edward Scissorhands''/"Sleepy Hollow"/"Ed Wood") one of filmdom's more prolific directors is known for his visual flair and storytelling ability, which is considered innovative, imaginative, whimsical, and at times even impishly perverse.
After the rather plainly directed Planet of the Apes , I was really hoping director Tim Burton would go back to his whacky Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow self.