Big Fish (2003)

VERDICT:
9/10 Tall Tales

One of the best movies out there about the universal power of storytelling.

Big Fish is about a middle-aged journalist with a son on the way who tries to make amends with his dying father in the hopes of hearing the real story of his long, unique life after being told nothing but grandiose fiction mixed with hints of reality about every little detail since the day he was born. Granted, those stories are absolutely fantastic, but

Now, when Tim Burton strikes out, he tends to strike out hard. Alice in Wonderland, Planet of the Apes, Mars Attacks! – you get the idea. But more often than not, Tim Burton is kinda the man and for a guy who’s made a career out of bringing nightmares to life in the most wonderful ways, it’s a little weird that one of his few “non-Burtonian” (copyright Cut The Crap Movie Reviews, 2010) efforts which doesn’t set out to traumatize out every last child in the room is actually one of the crowning achievements of his career. It’s a tonal mix between Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood and if there was ever a movie to come out in the past decade that reminds us why stories make the world go ’round, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find one that fits the bill any closer.

It’s a complicated meditation on fathers and sons, it’s a sprawling fairy tale that’s as strange as it is beautiful, and if Lost in Translation hadn’t come out the same year, this would have been an easy winner for Best Pic of ’03. The wildly imaginative script by John August paired with Burton’s signature way of bringing the barely imaginable to life in some truly vivid ways from a vast field of daffodils to Siamese twins performing in front of a Communist China SEO show makes for a great team that helps to move the plot along even when it starts to drag. There aren’t too many moments where you think, “That’s so Tim Burton,” but this thing’s got spectacle to burn all the same.

But unfortunately, the only somewhat questionable aspect of this movie is the cast.

Don’t get me wrong, Albert Finney is excellent as always as our aging man-for-all-seasons himself, Edward Bloom, (even if he does seem to be acting way older and more decrepit than he looks) and while I’m not a huge fan of Billy Crudup as his son (mainly because of that whole thing where he cheated on his pregnant wife to hook up with Claire Danes for a week, which is so incredibly lame), the real question goes back to whoever casted Ewan McGregor as Edward in his prime. See, Edward Bloom is a Southern boy, Albert Finney can pull off a deep Southern accent, and as much as I love Ewan McGregor, nothing about the guy helps me to bridge a connection between his real-life Scottish roots and Edward’s good ol’ boy pride. I don’t why I never really picked up on this until recently, but McGregor cannot pull off a deep Southern accent.

It’s an easy complaint to keep coming back to throughout the movie because it’s more or less inescapable, but since Edward Bloom is such a great protagonist and his life is so endlessly fantastical, McGregor does well to rise above his oral handicap and throw himself head first into Edward’s lust for life. The great thing about Edward is that even though a lot of what happens in his life probably doesn’t, that’s the big appeal and he makes you embrace the flavor in lieu of the facts.

I don’t know, have you ever just met someone who can turn the most mundane, happenstance occurrences into something bigger and more awe-inspiring than it probably has any right to be? That’s Edward Bloom. He’s mastered the art of story telling and, in a sense, it’s thanks to people like him and the folks who brought him to life that we watch movies in the first place. Stories are universal, stories well-told are timeless, and the life of Edward Bloom sure is one worth hearing.

So, writing about this movie seven years after it was first released and watching it for probably my fifth time this past week, Big Fish isn’t quite the surreal experience it once was, but there’s still so much to absolutely adore about this beautiful journey that it’s hard not to keep falling back in love with it. Up until the final Act, this was hovering at a solid 8, but, man, seeing this for the first time really is something else and hopefully it’ll speak to you on a very familiar level as it continues to do to me. In a world where story more often than not take a backseat to whatever’s gonna land the next sucker and their friends into a repeat viewing of the next Michael Bay masterpiece, it’s great to come across a movie that embraces it through and through. Geez, we need more Edward Blooms in the world.