The general problem with Big Fish is that we're meant to adore Edward's stories and so the movie fawns over them, and since they make up the majority of the movie's two-hour-plus running time, this means the movie fawns over itself. Without a greater tension between the romantic and realistic approaches, it's almost unavoidable: Burton ends up making a tribute to his own storytelling style. Which I have loved, especially in Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) and Beetlejuice (1988), but also in the Catwoman parts of Batman Returns (1992), the spidery incongruities in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), and some of the more wacky-tacky moments in Mars Attacks! (1996; the alien's insincerity alarmingly cuts through all the liberal optimism about outer space, glorified by Spielberg in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).) Burton's comic range is a lot wider and more individual than his emotional range, which has been limited to childhood hurts, the boy who's different, who's left out. Big Fish has some of Burton's signature weirdness but it foregrounds the emotional material that he doesn't have an equivalent talent for. (The Spielberg of E.T.--The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) is, in fact, better at bringing out these emotions in fantasy stories.)
Big Fish does have some neat stuff (I laughed hardest at the Communist ventriloquist act), and superb special effects (the heart-shaped Siamese twins with a single pair of legs are a marvel, and the movie manages to keep its giant in consistent proportion to the normal-sized people far better than Lord of the Rings did), but everything is slower than Burton at his best, and softer. And though the cinematography is by the great Philippe Rousselot (Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva (1981), John Boorman's Hope and Glory (1987), Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Philip Kaufman's Henry & June (1990)), the movie doesn't have the saturated-but-diffuse glimmer you'd expect from him. The lighting is washed out which makes the sets look like they were built in the backyards of suburban tract homes for a neighborhood picnic. And yet they don't have a homey look (like the friendly-fake design of David Byrne's sole directing effort True Stories (1986))--they're synthetic-festive but drab. Burton trained as a Disney animator (click here for career information) and visually his movies are all about bringing buggy ideas to life, not about the almost tactile beauty of celluloid, and so Rousselot was probably wasted on him anyway.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Excellent penetration into the goop within as always - thanks Alan!
2 - Ken J
Great, another "ain't I a smarty-pants" style review. You know the kind, where the reviewer fawns over himself.
3 - karinbadt
very much enjoyed this review. Am a professor in Paris, and was about to use this film in a class, because so many people have recommended it, but found it absolutely vapid. It doesn't have the emotional payoff of Edward Scissorhands, and this reviewer carefully shows why the story itself doesn't work, with no real characters creating tension and depth. The softness of the story, the sappyness of the character construction, is not made up for by the cleverness of the imaginative clips.
4 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment, these many years later. They're always appreciated.