Customer Reviews
Story telling as the embellishment of real life - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 09 Nov 2008 
It turns all around the father & his son & their difficult relation. It was perfect as long as the son believedin 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 & those stories sounded all silly, even sillier & sillier & they led to a complete break between the two, the father & the son, till the father came to the point of departing from this life. The son & his wife came back & 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 & discovered that this estate had some tremendous reality & that the witch of the old stories was the young girl from some other old story who had become a piano teacher & had benefited from this estate. She sure wasin 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 werein 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 & 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 & 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 & his mother can only see with their own eyes that all the characters of these stories are true people. Butin 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 & waiting for this last minute to recapture his true nature & 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 & how to make it look so natural that we are obliged to believein it & to go back to our infancy, when we believed wonderful stories full of unbelievable wonders that we could only believein deepin 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
Burton does it again! - By: Andrew Taylor, 04 Feb 2008 Once again Tim Burton pulls off a totaly original film unlike any you have ever seen before. The life of Edward Bloom is amazing & I love the stories which he tells his son, they are simply magical to hear. I wont ruin the ending for you but you will love it! 'The story...of my life'! Strongly recommended.
really unmissable - By: P. Ponias, 07 Jan 2008 one of the most original, beautiful & heart warming movies of the last few years.. the blend between reality & fantasy is truly unique. if u like the surreal worlds tim burton creates, then u have to see it..it really is his best - not being as dark as other offerings from him- with ed scissorhands & ed wood coming second to my book... amazing storytelling, at times visually stunning & a great extended cast make this a gem of a film .. a celebration of life while exploring the disfunctional relationship between a father & a son.. Be prepared to share a tear towards the end :) 6 stars
Sometimes Fiction is Better than the Truth - By: Kasey Driscoll, 16 Jul 2007 Tim Burton's return to genuine film making is a welcome endeavor indeed. Here he creates a film that reminds me of what great film making is all about: fantasy, love & reflecting on the human spirit. I scoffed at a review that compared Big Fish to The Wizard of Oz when Big Fish first came out, but upon viewing it the comparison is really not hyperbolic at all & is actually quite justified. There is a unique carelessness & an innocence that resides perfectly & constantlyin both films. To me, both films are truly a breath of fresh air & hope.
Big Fish is a book written by Daniel Wallace & is the delightful story of Edward Bloom, who has reached the twilight of his life & surrounds himself with his son, daughter-in-law & his wonderful wife Sandra. Eddie has seemingly lived a fantastic life of lies & exaggerations & his son has grown to call his bluff on more than one occasion. In fact, his son returns not just to possibly say good-bye to his father, but to attempt to get him to spill the beans on the truth of who his old man really is. Eddie of course, stands by his stories & brushes off his son's accusations nonchalantly. Most of the film we see Eddie revisit his life as a whole, seen through only his own stories. How he once befriended a 12 foot man; how he arrivedin a town that was paradise, once to early & once too late when he turned it back into paradise again; how he joined the circus for three years so he could find out pieces information once a month from Amos the ringmaster about the girl Eddie was sure would be his wife & how Sandra would believe Eddie to be deadin war but he would return. The stories are full of details that would clearly indicate they are false but sometimes they are just better that way. Eddie is a mythological figure & that is just fine with him & as a viewer it's fine with me as well.
Eddie is played by Albert Finney who isin turn mirrored by Eddie's youthful version, the outstanding Ewen MacGregor who once again proves his versatility. Jessica Lange plays the older Sandra & she is played as a youngster by the talented Alison Lohman who carries as much energy & beauty as you could expect for a role with so little dialogue & so much importance. She is a real find & makes you fallin love with her right along with Eddie. Helena Bonham Carter brings her talents to the roles of The Witch & Jenny (or all of the other important womenin Eddie's life). Steve Buscemi shows up, which is always a pleasant surprise & of course Amos is played by Danny DeVito who is as enjoyable as ever. The flat Keanu Reeves clone Billy Crudup is perhaps the only drawback, but he is a safe casting call as Eddie's son & does what he canin discovering that his father is exactly what he says he is & more.
Let me just add that I believe Big Fish is a family film. I don't see why it shouldn't be rated PG rather than PG-13. The language rises above the prime time television level once, there is blood onlyin a comedic & romantic fight sequence that has a truly admirable message & there is a women's nude rear displayed briefly & non-sexually. This is not grounds for a PG-13 movie. I would bring a seven year old to see this. In fact, my guess is that the movie was directed at this demographic. When content is not exploitative, it is not really inappropriate. I can't see why Rock Diesel films get PG-13ed when the message is nothing short of "Kill the bad guys, make a lame joke, drive & crash really cool vehicles & get the dirty chick". Anyway, Big Fish may be about a guy who is stretching the truth but the characters' hearts couldn't be more firmlyin the right place. The scene when Eddie fills an entire field with Sandra's favorite flower & standsin the middle of the field, outside of her window & calls out to her comes to mind. It brings joy to my heartin a way that only a film like The Wizard of Oz can, & a small child should never ever miss that kind of message. Big Fish is a smart film that really generates a ton of emotion & convincing special effects. I don't doubt for a moment that more work went into the effects than money. This film carried a sense of hope, pride, real love, respect, fantasy & the crucial element that films of these tainted times often forget: natural & unforced optimism.
Then there is Tim Burton. He is the filmmaker that can put all of these elements together & for the first time tug at your emotions as well. Two things make this film better than Burton's other work. Firstly, it is real & doesn't dwell on being over-stylized & under-dramatized. Secondly, it is pure, clean & full of moments we can all relate too. Tim Burton has made a film that will alienate his older fans who haven't matured like he has, without "selling out" (he's done that before) & he has made a film that the whole world can watch, enjoy & discover this unique filmmaker. I'm glad that he saved some of his real film making inspiration for this wonderful little story.
Magical (and much better than Tim Burton's others) - By: Petrolhead, 21 Oct 2006 Big Fish is a truly marvellous film, a tear-jerking, smile-inducing journey through a whole bag of fairy-tales, all wrapped upin the evolving relationship between a good son & his larger-than-life father. The whole film is perfectly judged. The cast is just right, the humour is finely judged, the pathos is heart-warming. (And the DVD has plenty of extras about special effects, the author, the director, the characters, etc, if that sort of thing matters to you.)
A really nice, underrated film to watch with a loved one, or at least someone you won't mind laughing & crying with...
