Big Fish

Big Fish is an affectionate, sometimes over-insistent film about a father whose stories have become a problem for his son. Tim Burton makes the fantasy inviting, and the family scenes give it enough purpose to justify most of the wandering. John August’s screenplay, adapted from Daniel Wallace’s novel, asks how much someone can be understood through the stories they choose to tell. We recommend it, though anyone who shares Will Bloom’s impatience with his father will occasionally feel that the film has taken Ed’s side before hearing the complaint.

Ewan McGregor gives the young Ed an eagerness that makes the fantastic episodes easy to enter; he seems entirely comfortable with their extravagance, and encourages us to settle in too. Albert Finney, playing the older Ed, is more interesting because his charm comes with the expectation of being indulged. We were moved by the hurt in his performance when that indulgence meets Billy Crudup’s sceptical Will. Finney makes the storytelling seem so much a part of Ed’s pride that a request for plain facts can feel like an insult.

Crudup has the less rewarding assignment, repeatedly having to question the flights of fancy we have been encouraged to enjoy. He gives Will’s resistance a useful stiffness: it is possible to understand the son while wishing he would relax. August could have allowed him more room, because the family conflict becomes too simple whenever doubt itself is treated as a character defect. Jessica Lange’s Sandra supplies warmth without the same insistence on being liked, and her presence helps the domestic scenes settle.

Philippe Rousselot’s cinematography makes the fantastical flashbacks easy to enjoy as pictures, even when the stories themselves are slight. Dennis Gassner’s production design helps each invention feel worth a look, though we sometimes wanted the places to be stranger rather than merely pleasant. Burton is good at encouraging us to linger over these sights, but less successful at making them feel dangerous. Danny Elfman’s music presses harder for emotion, occasionally making a tender moment feel overexplained when Finney’s performance has already done enough.

Chris Lebenzon’s editing has the awkward job of moving between the fantastical past and the resistant son in the present, and the joins are generally clear. The larger pacing problem belongs to August and Burton: another fanciful episode does not always change what we understand about Ed. Some stretches ask us to admire his imagination for longer than it deserves, especially once we have grasped why Will finds it tiring. At 125 minutes, the film gives us enough time to share a little of that fatigue.

Most critics disagree with us, finding Burton’s gentler fantasy too sentimental to carry the father-son drama. We think they undervalue Finney, whose mixture of pleasure and wounded pride makes the reconciliation theme matter. Measured against the darker fantasy associated with Burton, the film can seem short of danger. As a family fantasy, though, it has a worthwhile concern: what happens when the way a parent enjoys remembering things becomes exhausting for a child. Choose it for an evening when a little sentiment is welcome, and do not expect every excursion to earn its length.