The bigger the fish, the better

[Plot Thinner]

Confessions are difficult, especially when you spend most of your time in denial of your own work by being critical of another’s'. With that said, I must confess that Tim Burton actually made me cry. This past weekend, I put all criticisms aside and stepped into an AMC theater, seated myself 5 rows from the screen, and anxiously awaited for the projectionist to get back from his smoke break, and dim the lights to start Tim Burton's BIG FISH. Like other Tim Burton pictures, I wasn't sure what to expect. Was he going to show me something I hadn’t seen before? Was he going to make me feel something I hadn’t felt before? Well, as the picture began, my intrigue slowly slipped into the unbound dreamscape that is the world of Tim Burton. Not to overlook the contributions from the story, the performers, the score, and everyone else involved…the story is beautiful, the performances are beautiful, the score is beautiful, and Tim Burton was able to compose this overwhelming sense of beauty into what I feel is possibly his greatest contribution to the art of motion pictures. Ok, I know I sound a little overly enthused about it all, but you have to understand that aesthetically speaking, it’s a Tim Burton Picture…but still, there’s something all together, much more enchanting about this movie. You have to see it to understand, and it’s all simply because it’s just a really good story. I’m sure others will gain more from it than others, but I personally feel that it’s one of the most touching movies I’ve seen.
Note: take a small pocket pack of Kleenex with you to the theater, or for you tough guys, just use the cuff ends of your long sleeve shirt...
With that said, happy movie going...

[kahiti]

I'm no expert or experienced movie reviewer, but the impression I got from "Big Fish" was that it was long and boring...or maybe long because it was boring (to me). I got the feeling that the father's tales were supposed to deviate from straight reality into fantasy or at least whimsy, but all I saw were a few special effects and much less than whimsical imagery. I have the feeling that the book would have been better for me... I suppose also, that all this was meant to drive home the theme that usually tall tales are much more interesting than the little truth they may be grounded in. However, this comes as no shock to me because it's usually why I go to the movies or read fiction anyway...

[Plot Thinner]

I believe that Tim Burton’s imagination compliments the story well, and that the relationship between storyteller and listener (Bloom and his son, or Burton and the audience) was intensely circulatory. Thematically speaking, I feel that the story reveals, in a circulatory sense, that one should suspend disbelief in life, just as they do in stories. It keeps one’s outlook on life youthful and limitless. I do feel that Burton has come closest to achieving a greater appeal with this movie than with his others, almost overwhelmingly. With no disrespect to Burton, I agree with you that the book probably would have been better, but when doesn't this rationale of siding with one’s imagination over another's flashing pictures apply? And please don’t say LOTR…

[Jeremy7211]

Read the book a while back... so forgive me if I can't make many important comparisons. I greatly enjoyed it (very short, and owing a debt or two to Joyce) since the bits about Bloom and his son were less significant and the tales/jokes were a bit more rapid-fire.

In the way of cursory changes: there was no French girlfriend, the witch/little girl/swamp-woman stories were seperate, a few of the episodes didn't exist at all, and a few were added.

The biggest change was in regards to the ending, and I feel that Burton bungled it a bit from the book. Daniel Wallace's ending simply has Bloom swimming away as 'big fish,' kind of a neat synthesis between the father and the son's storytelling and great moment of closure. Burton did render this decently, but then he added that weird inexplicable coda of the funeral. I can't make heads or tails of that, but I felt it vaguely disappointing; seeing the twins not-Siamese, the giant only half-tall, and a very old non-lycanthropic ringmaster was a let-down, and positioned the son's objective and unimaginative reality as the final word over the father's fantastic stories.