It is admittedly unfair to judge a director's latest film based on his much superior earlier work. Yet such is the case with "Big Fish," macabre maestro Tim Burton's ostensible attempt to capture audience adoration, critical acclaim and maybe a few year-end awards.
Calling to mind such epoch-spanning stories as "Forrest Gump" (the film critics have most associated it with) and John Irving's "The World According to Garp," "Big Fish" oscillates between the present-day reunion of terminally-ill Ed Bloom (Albert Finney) and Will (Billy Crudup), his estranged son, and the mythical tall tales Ed told Will through his childhood, presumably compensating for a less-than-extraordinary life.
Based on these exaggerated stories of homespun intrigue and grandeur, it seems there was little young Ed Bloom (a peppy, twangy-voiced Ewan McGregor) didn't accomplish or experience at a young age.
In high school, Bloom was the star of the football, basketball and baseball teams, a straight-"A" student and a ladykiller. He also befriended a dangerous giant who threatened his small southern hometown, joined a circus ran by a werewolf, indirectly broke up the engagement of his wife to another man and went AWOL during the Korean War, finding his way back to America with two female Siamese twin singers.
The older he grew, the more Bloom's son disbelieved the phantasmagorical stories his father breathlessly told and slowly understood the central weakness in their relationship: He had no idea who his father actually was or what kind of life he had lived.
As an adult, Will finally confronts Ed on his deathbed, allowing Burton and an interesting supporting cast of characters to recreate the elder Bloom's stories as his son revisits them.
And there are lovely and delightful passages in the movie, echoing elements and sequences from the Coen Brothers' southern-friend episodic yarn "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?" Ed's stories make fantastic eye candy, and Burton's imagery and onscreen eccentricities are as striking as ever.
The lead performances, however, are scattershot. McGregor's southern accent could have used some work — his intonation made me appreciate the pitch-perfect work by the actors in "Cold Mountain" — but his uncanny resemblance to Finney helped thematically fuse the story's respective timelines together. You can see the same man behind both actor's eyes, but there is an inherent disparity between the younger Bloom's enthusiasm and the older's staunch gruffness.
Alison Lohman, playing a younger version of Bloom's wife, shares a similar likeness to Jessica Lange, her present-day counterpart in the story. As Will Bloom, Billy Crudup is his usually impressive self — someone get this man a true breakthrough role. And a Steve Buscemi performance never hurts: The highly regarded character actor and cult figure has an enjoyable turn as a poet-turned-bank robber.
Erroneously marketed as being "from the imagination of Tim Burton" (it's based on a slim novel by Daniel Wallace), the film carries a few of the director's distinctive touches here and there, from casting decisions like Danny DeVito and Helena Bonham Carter (Burton's fiancé) to a few costume and set designs reminiscent of his gothic work.
Burton gradually pulls back from the weirdness in the story and adopts a saccharine tone in the conclusion, an atypical sentimentality that nullifies the more interesting and emotionally complex aspects in the story.
Nonetheless, the closing scene is an affecting reminder of the tenuous bond between truth and not lies necessarily, but a factual mysticism.
What this collection of tall tales and anecdotes needed was the warped and singular perspective that characterized Burton's "Ed Wood," "Beetlejuice," and even the grievously underrated "Mars Attacks!" After all, any number of filmmakers could have made "Big Fish" their own, but only one could unleash Pee-wee Herman on the masses.
Grade: B