Big Fish

  

Directed by Tim Burton

 

Written by Daniel Wallace (novel) and John August (screenplay)

 

Rated PG-13 for a fight scene, some images of nudity and a suggestive reference

125 minutes run time

 

Mythology meets the deep south in this home-spun collection of tales too tall to believe, or are they?  Told by Ewan McGregor (as young Ed Bloom) and Albert Finney (as old Ed Bloom) this movie weaves these wonderful stories, the true, the slightly exaggerated and the downright outrageous, into a tapestry of a man’s life.

 

Armed with his own common sense and a confidence that could only be nonsense, young Ed Bloom (Ewan McGregor—Star Wars, Down With Love, Blackhawk down) sets off down the road of life to find his fortune.  On the way he encounters giants, jumping spiders, Asian beauties joined at the waist and a town so great you just don’t want to leave.  Ever.

 

Billy Crudup (Almost Famous, The Hi-Lo Country) plays Bloom’s son Will, who has spent a lifetime trying to separate the pepper from the fly droppings in his father’s life.  He is called to his dying father’s bedside for one last attempt at genuine, truthful communications, instead of the fantasies that made up his childhood.  Will’s mother Sandra (Jessica Lange—Titus, Cousin Bette, Cape Fear) echoes her son’s dismay at having to live with a man whose reported life-experiences have more in common with Ulysses than the average American husband.

 

Fortunately for the movie, Will’s bedside entreaties to his father to make sense are of no avail.  The father merely tells him about saving a giant’s life by intervening in a terrified town’s plans to kill the gentle monster; and of narrowly escaping a town where nobody ever leaves.  The young Ed Bloom does leave the town, however, sensing that to stay there is to take wrongful advantage of the “easy way out” in life.  Instead he braves the jumping spiders and clutching branches of the dark and malevolent forest; walking without his shoes through the thorn-covered ground to keep his promise of meeting up with his giant friend.

 

Ed goes on to join a circus, as all good, adventurous, boys are wont to do.  This particular circus is run by a wily and unscrupulous ring-leader played with panache by Danny De Vito.  It is during his blundering work at the circus that he sights the love of his life.  Love at first sight, and there is no doubt about it.  The woman he will marry and die with, for whom he will forsake all others.  Corny?  Like Kansas in July.

 

Like the mythical hero risking all for the golden fleece with which to claim the hand of his beloved, Bloom uses his wits as well as his muscles to get the truth about his loved one from the greedy and ruthless ring-leader.  He does everything but steal the eye of DeVito to force his cooperation, but eventually finds the key to his loved one.  Finding her, he confronts the gorgon of her fiancée and goes on to the next battle.

 

A combination of Daniel Boone, Paul Bunyan, the Headless Horseman and various Greek heroes, does Ed Bloom ever mess up?  Is he always perfect in slaying evil after evil in the pursuit of beauty and light?  Yes, he does make mistakes, his biggest one perhaps being spending his entire life avoiding reality.  Or so thinks the son Will. It just isn’t fair.  In spite of the goodness of his imaginary quests, all his father is really doing is losing his God-given existence to a never-ending daydream.

 

Was his father perfect?  There was that incident when he returned to the town that was too good to leave and spent quite a bit of time with that beautiful seductress, whose house he saved from destruction, presumably at the hands of the cold, cruel outside world.  The jumping spiders are gone, and in their place is the outside world, in the form of a new highway, bringing its poisonous greed and pride into what used to be the Garden of Eden.  Did he fall victim to the siren’s sweet singing after all?  Is he really the biggest fish in the pond, destined to live forever by avoiding the hook of reality?

 

In a very sweet ending this all comes together, or sort of comes together, in a confirmation that, yes, it’s alright to dream.  And if our only sin is the sin of dreaming too much, that is probably not the end of the world.

 

Modest but workmanlike performances by McGregor, Finney and Crudup, whose talents are over-shadowed by this remarkable screenplay that brings the feelings of the common unconscious to the silver screen.  A great witch part for Helena Bonham Carter who manages to be scary and friendly at the same time, a combination of the wicked and kindly witches of Wizard of Oz, all at once.

 

But as the friendly giant who almost eats one sheep too many, Matthew McGrory’s (the human Sasquatch in Bubble Boy) Karl steals the show.  This is a giant of gigantic proportions, a man who bears the cross in nonconformity in search of someone who will see through his fear to his real identity as a loving human being.

 

Nominated for an Oscar for best musical score, which is totally beyond this reviewer, Big Fish is a sweet movie that provides a couple of hour’s entertainment for the whole family.  Do not leave the kids home for this one, you may need them to explain it to you.