CATRIONA PAUL at the Movies.

NOMINATED FOR a handful of Golden Globes (although largely ignored by the Oscars), many critics have heralded Big Fish as a triumphal return to form for director Tim Burton following the best-forgotten Planet of the Apes. Starring Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney, Big Fish is about story-telling and the limits of poetic licence. Not surprisingly, Burton emerges to champion the imagination in a father-son drama with oddball tendencies.

Central character and chief story-teller, Edward Bloom, is dying. He is visited from abroad by his adult son Will (Billy Crudup), who has one last chance to find out the truth behind the tall tales on which he was raised. Old Bloom, whose charisma is somehow maintained despite deathbed status by Finney, cannot answer a question without falling into story-telling mode. And so a series of flashbacks recreate the adventures of young Bloom (played by the ever-buoyant McGregor), setting off to make his way in a world complete with giants, werewolves and witches.

The film crams beguiling concepts and bizarre characters into every corner of every tale and uses computer-generated images to create a stylish and startling film.  Despite this, Burton’s world is so completely of his imagination that for all its friendly freaks and impossible happenings, it feels smaller than the shared version of reality to which most of us subscribe. Those who loved the gothic charm of Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow will undoubtedly find the small and wacky world of Big Fish equally beguiling. But for those whose first reaction is to sympathise with Bloom’s son, (“cut the crap Dad, what really happened?”), this may seem a long movie.

BIG FISH (PG)
General release, selected cinemas

Director: Tim Burton
Writer: John August, based on the novel by Daniel Wallace
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman, Helena Bonham Carter, Robert Guillaume
Certificate: PG
Running time: 110 minutes
Country: US
Year: 2003

© Catriona Paul, 2004