Will Bloom, the international journalist, and his wife, French photojournalist Josephine Blum, are leaving for Paris to return to Ashton, Alabama, the birthplace of Will. They both left in mysterious circumstances on the grounds that his father Edward Bloom had cancer but his father soon died after a long period of treatment. Although the mother of Edward's wife, Sandra Blum, has been contacted, Will has been neglected for three years since his wedding. Over time, after Edward's death, his father's case will be one of Edward's fiction.
Burton shows the rivalry between father and son but not the rancor, which seems to fit with the film's calm lyricism. But the father-son conflict is meant as the dramatic crux, and a forceful actor would have given it some much-needed bite.
Overall, the film feels like it issues from a place Burton doesn't inhabit.
City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul
August 21, 2009
Burton, favoring form over content, flavor over fact, has been often criticized for not knowing how to bring his work to satisfactory resolution. But I'd call that a good thing. Blame it on his dad.
Reliant more on powerful familial emotions than wacky splendor, "Big Fish" treads as close to our real world as Tim Burton ever could - a melancholy dissection of paternal distance and never truly knowing how many lives those we love can truly affect.
Delightful, sad father-son story for teens and up.
Time Out
February 09, 2006
The film doesn't so much reject history as selectively rewrite it to its own reactionary, even offensive ends. This might perhaps be just about tolerable were the film funny, illuminating, insightful or moving. It is not.
