Big Fish
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Movie Reviews of Big Fish
Movie Review: Simply Wonderful!
Summary: 5 Stars
Every once in a good while, the impact of a particular entertainment format is wholly contingent upon the emotional tapestry the viewer/listener brings to it.
This is a classic example.
In one of the most un-Burtoneque projects to come from Tim Burton, "Big Fish" is a mesmerizing fairy tale wonderfully reminicsent of the underrated "Edward Scissorhands" more than a decade ago. Depending upon where you are emotionally, this can be not only a satisfying viewing experience but an equally thought-provoking one that, chances are, will leave an indelible impression.
This time around Tim Burton abandons his usually dark fare for the southern tall tale. He brilliantly brings to realization this regional cultural phenomenom with aplomb and moreover, with no condescension whatsoever for a very important art form. As a southerner, I was quite pleased with the respect granted to an age-old southern tradition that shows us the consequences of not being able to see the forest for the trees.
In a nutshell, the story follows a son's last attempts to discover who his father really is as the son insists that during his upbringing, his father has hidden his true self behind his tall tales. The son and the father have their final confrontation on the father's deathbed and it is here the son finally realizes the time he has wasted because of his "inability to see for looking."
Albert Finney is simply captivating. I have never seen him in a southern role and he was just wonderful as were the supporting cast. While the brooding son, Billy Crudup, was most effective, this was indeed Finney's moment and proved to be a fitting vehicle for his remarkable talents. Ewan McGregor personfies charm as the young Edward Bloom.
This is a wonderful dissertaion on the intricate, intimate, and often complex father-son relationship. It is also a wonderful movie for families to share together.
Visually, Burton put his stamp on it as he helped to realize Edward Bloom's (Finney) tall tales as the special effects were dazzling and wonderful in helping the audience to see very well the kind of man Edward Bloom was. While the end of the movie was somehwat melancholy, it was right on target and did not descend into maudlin sentimentality - it proved to be the natural order of events.
I highly recommend this as you will enjoy viewing this one over and over again. I have never been more pleased with a DVD purchase than I have with this one and suspect already as I write this review that it is steadily becoming one of my all time favorites, not only for its entertainment value but more so because of the valuable insight it provided into my own situation.
Movie Review: `Big Fish' is a heartfelt magic carpet ride
Summary: 5 Stars
Another artistic and commercial failure such as "Mars Attacks!" or "Planet of the Apes," and Tim Burton might have seceded into non-being.
However, let it be known that in Burton's latest film "Big Fish," he has fashioned perhaps his ultimate achievement. In this, his 11th major motion picture, Burton has deftly interspooled fantasy with reality as never before, creating a film that sparkles with mythological glamour.
Whether it's the supposed halting of time when true love is stumbled upon, landing that slippery belle with a band of gold in the river of fortune or assisting 14-foot giants in their quest for realizing their equally-as-giant ambitions, "Big Fish" is a work of utter resplendence.
Are the improbable events that roll off of Edward Bloom's graying tongue simply tall-tale rubbish of a life that might have been, or is there something more? Who was this man behind the inventive veil? The theme of the film revolves around this riddle, as dad-to-be Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) sits bedside with his dying father, Edward Bloom (Albert Finney), in order to sift fact from fiction before it is too late.
In flashback, Will Bloom recalls the stories his father told him, trying to relay them just as he remembers. We hear of a shriveled witch with a black patch covering up her right eye that, when stared into, will reveal one's means of death and the heaven-like town of Spectre, an isolated township that, when accessed by a major road and big business, wisps into a state of dilapidation.
Not to mention Karl, the aforementioned giant, played wonderfully by Matthew McGrory, who gobbles up entire cornfields overnight and has driven the townsfolk to talk of murdering the behemoth.
If not for the helping hand of Edward Bloom, Karl very well could have wound up a fictional afterthought, a spooky subject of campfire make-believe. Further still, there is the tale of a once-great poet whose creative reservoirs go dry all of a sudden, only to find his calling in the least likely of professions - thanks to Edward, and so many others.
By the conclusion of the film, the viewer cannot help but come to the realization that although a lot of what Edward says is not completely true, a great deal of his farfetched stories are closer to the truth than one can ever know.
The bottom line is the people within his tales are indeed flesh and blood, and their lives were undoubtedly touched by Edward's selflessness. No, Edward's fib of the factual was not a reflection of his need for attention. Rather, its purpose lies in breathing imaginative vigor into those individuals he had the honor of befriending along his life journey.
Movie Review: Life is nothing but invisible marvellous wonders
Summary: 5 Stars
It turns all around the father and his son and their difficult relation. It was perfect as long as the son believed in the stories the father was telling him all the time, that is to say as long as Father Christmas really was a childhood hero. But older age came and those stories sounded all silly, even sillier and sillier and they led to a complete break between the two, the father and the son, till the father came to the point of departing from this life. The son and his wife came back and he was confronted to the stories again. But one day when he was sorting out some old documents of his father's for his mother he came across a strange deed that showed the existence of an estate under the name of his father. And he went there and discovered that this estate had some tremendous reality and that the witch of the old stories was the young girl from some other old story who had become a piano teacher and had benefited from this estate. She sure was in love with the father but the father was faithful to his wife. The son then discovers that all the stories were just embellished true stories. The Siamese Chinese twin women were in fact true Chinese twins though not Siamese. And an epiphany takes place. When the son was keeping watch over his father at the hospital one night, the father called him and the son understood the father was asking him to tell him a bedside story to put him to sleep, the big sleep. And the son is inspired to tell him his own version of his father's embellished stories and that story enables the father to go to his long sleep with all the characters of his own stories. And when the funeral arrives, the son, his wife and his mother can only see with their own eyes that all the characters of these stories are true people. But in the meantime some miracle had happened. The son on the command from his dying father had taken him away from the hospital to the river where he had put him back into the water, as if the father was only a captured big fish living among the humans and waiting for this last minute to recapture his true nature and swim away down the river where he had come from. That's when the film could have turned grotesque or just funny strange. But Tim Burton is a genius of the paranormal and how to make it look so natural that we are obliged to believe in it and to go back to our infancy, when we believed wonderful stories full of unbelievable wonders that we could only believe in deep in our hearts because they were so beautiful. Tim Burton is a magician that mesmerizes us with surrealistic images.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Movie Review: A fascinating movie!
Summary: 5 Stars
I unfortunately never got a chance to see this movie while it was playing at the movie theatres and it's a real bummer because "Big Fish" is a really amazingly well done movie and one of the greatest movies of 2003. I was lured into seeing this film after reading and hearing all of the great reviews that this film got and let me tell you, this movie deserves all of the great reviews that it gets. Another thing that also made me want to see this was that it was directed by Tim Burton, one of my all time favorite directors. In fact, even as high of expectations that I had, this movie surpassed even those. "Big Fish" is the tale of an elderly father named Edward Bloom. Edward and his son William have never really gotten along very well. Edward has told his son William about his eccentric and highly adventurous life during his younger years to his son when he was a child but William however found it to be too `fantasy-oriented' and wants to hear Edward's `real' story without resorting to talking like it's a `fantasy' world. After it turned into an argument the two became estranged for over three years but Edward has fallen ill to a terminal illness and Will returns to see him and learn about his past. Flashing back into Edwards younger days, the movie showcases all of the fun not to mention outrageously adventurous things Edward did during his younger days.
This movie is just absolutely amazing but it's also a mix of tears and laughter as it's one of the most bittersweet movies that I've ever watched. Tim Burton who usually showcased his trademark with his generally macabre natured movies completely takes a U-Turn and replaces the Halloween styles with a more southern classic atmosphere and he as a result breaks new ground in his career and it works almost perfectly. Burton on a directing note, hits another home run right out of the park on this movie as well. The story is just stellar and brings out incredible depth to the father/son dynamic.
The acting by the entire cast was absolutely stellar especially by Ewan McGregor as the young Edward Bloom and also by Albert Finney as the much older Edward. The movie plot is just fun and not to mention heartbreaking yet funny all at the same time. It will leave you happy yet wanting to cry at the same time. This movie is so much fun and so emotional that I literally did not want it to end. It's that Good!
Quite frankly, this is one of the best movies of 2003 and I strongly recommend that you buy this DVD as soon as possible because it is worth the money and I plan on watching it at least 500 more times!
Movie Review: Burton's best since SCISSORHANDS
Summary: 5 Stars
Tim Burton has been lambasted numerous times in the past as only caring about visuals, having characters that are nothing but caricatures, and in the case of BIG FISH, having characters that are only an excuse to segue into an exciting visual.
Uh, wrong.
There's more heart and soul in many of his films, namely EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, and our topic of discussion today, BIG FISH, than in most other movies that I can think of. Each one brings a tear to my eye, each one is extremely beautiful, emotionally and visually, and each one tells a bittersweet truth about humanity, while enveloping us in a completely fantastical world at the same time.
I saw BIG FISH for the first time last night and I ain't gonna forget it any time soon. It's the story of a son, played by Billy Crudup, and a father, played by Albert Finney, whose life after his son's birth consists of nothing but telling the same blown-up stories again and again. This could be due to, or the result of, never being close to his son, and never being able to properly communicate with him (or people in general). Or it could just be a man blowing up the truth due to an unconscious dissatisfaction with settling down, and giving up the freedom of his youth. It could be a lot of things.
He spins yarns of 15' tall giants, witches, werewolves, tuna-sized catfish, bank robberies, mysterious towns, circuses, the Korean war, Siamese twins, and on and on, and his son is sick of hearing it. He just wants his father to tell him the truth, and is particularly humorless about it all, even as his father lays on his deathbed.
The stories are shown in incredible, often visually stunning flashbacks, with the quixotic Ewan McGregor as the young Edward Bloom, and I was very satisfied to see that Tim Burton is still using predominantly non-CGI special effects -- or, if they were CGI, they were tangible and extremely well-done.
The final scenes will strike some as too sappy or manipulative, but I though the effect of the entire undertaking was profoundly beautiful, especially the ending which brings everything together in a bittersweet fashion that never struck me as too sentimental, too apparent, or too conventional.
Hats off to Tim Burton, for this was one of the best of 2003, and without a doubt his best film since EDWARD SCISSORHANDS.