Big Fish
Big Fish is film that only suceeds if it is great. Unfortunetly, Big Fish is good movie but not a great film. For director Tim Burton (Bettlejuice and Edward Scissorhands) Big Fish comes close to mainstream as Burton gets since Ed Wood. Written by John August from a novel by Daniel Wallace Big Fish is a story about William Bloom (Billy Crudup ) who is trying to learn more about his dying father (Albert Finney) by reliving stories and myths his father told him about himself. As all Tim Burton films are Big Fish is great to look at and also holds Burton's trademark quirkiness, anytime there is scene that is a flashback to the earlier stories there is a strangeness involved.
Performance wise, Albert Finney (Traffic) is the star of the show. He is perfectly cast as a dying father who seems to not understand why his son resents him so much. Billy Crudip (Almost Famous) and Ewan McGreggor (Down With Love) are also well cast and also perform their roles quite well. Helan Bonham Carter (Planet of the Apes) who has a real life child with Burton is also great as she always is. There were some great scenes that I really loved in Big Fish, first off, the scene where time stands still was great, another great scene is near the conclusion where Bloom fixes up the house by the use of unconventional methods. The use of symbolism was great in the film.
For the most part Big Fish is seemingly dull, it is not until the final 30 minutes of the movie that Big Fish begins to gain strength. The first hour and 30 minutes take forever to get the obvious conclusion as the first half could have had some faster pacing and better editing. The whole idea of Big Fish was interesting but Burton seems to fail to get to the point often to much. Where it wants to succeed, Big Fish becomes dull, and as for Jessica Langes character who is in most of the movie, absolutley nothing is revealed about her which leads me to believe that Edward Bloom should get to know her before marrying her.
In conclusion, Tim Burton is trying to make a modern day Forrest Gump. Where Gump suceeds is that it introduces us to characters and ideas that are totally unbelievable but we do believe them because we feel for the characters. On the other hand with Big Fish the film takes to long to get to the point and when it finally does, there is no emotional involvment for the characters at the end. Big Fish does have all the pieces to make a truely great film but seems to do nothing with the them for most of the movie. Sadly, Tim Burton's Big Fish should not be nominated for this years Oscars not because it doesn't look good or have decent acting but because for most of the two hour long running time, Big Fish is really one big boring fish.
Runtime: 120mins
Aspect Ratio:1.85:1
Columbia Tri Star Pictures
Rated: PG-13.
