‘Eagerly awaited’ was the epithet often attached to Tim Burton’s eleventh outing; his tenth, Planet Of The Apes was a commercial and critical failure (though with the exception of Batman, Tim Burton films are generally loved more by critics than the general public). So, the critics wondered, would this be Burton’s return to form after the dire Planet Of The Apes? 'Hmmm, no, not really’ was the general consensus. Big Fish was too whimsical for some, not as dark as his previous successes, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, to name but three.
It is true to say that it is more whimsical and not as dark as his other work, but in my humble opinion, this ranks as one of his best. This is only the second literary adaptation in the Burton canon, the other being 1999’s Sleepy Hollow. Taken from the novel Big Fish by Danny Wallace, it tells the tall tales of Edward Bloom, played by Albert Finney as a dying man and Ewan MacGregor as a young man. The story opens with Edward’s estranged son Will (Billy Crudup) a journalist in Paris and an expectant father, flying home to Ashton, Alabama when he hears that his father is dying. Will takes this last opportunity to find out who his father really is. Having been frustrated and often embarrassed for years by his father fantastical yarns, he wants to find the man behind the stories, or 'amusing lies’ as Will calls them.
And what tall tales Edward likes to tell – during his travels he meets a witch, a giant, a werewolf, a poet turned bank-robber (Steve Buscemi) and Korean conjoined twins. The story stretches from the fifties to present day and naturally has drawn comparisons to that other Alabama epic, Forrest Gump, although this is far more fantastical, drawing on American folk stories and Greek mythology, told in a magical realism style.
Finney is excellent as the older southern gent Edward Bloom, MacGregor shines as the dashing romantic youthful Edward, even if he doesn’t quite nail the accent. Steve Buscemi turns out another eccentric turn as the poet/bank-robber, but I have yet to see a film where Buscemi isn’t eminently watchable.
Top marks must go to Tim Burton for what is his first film about relationships between 'real people’ that tackles genuine emotions without any sense of irony. While Big Fish has all the weird fairytale hallmarks of a Burton film – the witches, the giants, a town called Spectre; this is essentially about the relationship between father and son, and the scenes between Finney and Crudup are handled realistically and sensitively. The only criticism I have would be the final scene, which appears to muddy the waters of the story somewhat. But overall, this is an odd, funny and charming and underrated film which proves that Burton is one of the most talented directors working in Hollywood today.