However, Big Fish is American Gothic rather than pantomime gothic. Tim Burton is known for making spooky movies. Instead, Finney and Crudup make it matter. So we did some investigations of our own and fight out why this movie is a must-watch flick. In the hands of lesser actors - or a director unwilling to commit fully - it could all reduce down to a sludge of movie-of-the-week melodrama. He's wounded, but he is not a jerk, nor ungrateful. Crudup makes Will recognizable as someone with a hole in his life who feels resentment that his father withholds information that might fill it. A man who spins fables and fantastic tales from his life is dying - his journalist son finally wants his father to tell the truth. Finney makes Edward a gregarious raconteur, not a kook. This is what makes casting Finney and Crudup as Edward and Will so pivotal. He simply wants a real understanding of his father's life without the Disneyland trappings. We root for Edward and his flamboyant story, but we also side with Will's occasional embarrassment and continual frustration. Switching these roles around provides Big Fish with a unique and engaging set-up. It tells the story of a Paris-based journalist named Will Bloom who comes home to Ashton, Alabama, when he hears that his father, Edward, is terminally ill with cancer and has been taken off chemotherapy. This is a story we typically see with the roles reversed: The artist (perhaps a filmmaker) has their storytelling inclinations derided by a parent who wishes the child would just get a "real" job. Big Fish is a 2003 movie directed by Tim Burton. This is what makes Big Fish Tim Burton's best film, among many other factors. Thus, the film ends up being a great tribute to storytelling: Instead of just glorifying fantasies and whimsical visuals, it gives them real-world consequences and weight - something a Tim Burton movie hadn't yet fully achieved at that point in his career. Fortunately for movie fans, Burton seems to have seen this failure as a sign guiding him to make a drastic change.ΔΆ003's Big Fish doesn't eschew Burton's "isms," but it does compartmentalize them. Unlike Batman and Batman Returns, however, it didn't work. Likewise, when Burton took on 2001's Planet of the Apes, he seemingly tried to do what he did with the first two Batman movies, squeezing the primary components into his peculiar aesthetic. Making a movie about Ed Wood didn't challenge Burton's approach so much as take it in a specific direction. The movies are strikingly similar based on premise alone. One such mold-breaking Burton movie is 1994's Ed Wood. But even then, there is an artifice to Wood's legend that matches Burton's vibe. Big Fish PG-13 2003, Drama, 2h 5m 75 Tomatometer 220 Reviews 89 Audience Score 250,000+ Ratings What to know Critics Consensus A charming father-and-son tale filled with typical Tim Burton. Just a year short of a decade later, Big Fish directed by Tim Burton was released to theaters, based on the 1998 novel by Daniel Wallace.
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