Unfortunately, an argument that it's one of his more frustrating, empty efforts holds more water.
Despite a big cast and epic scope, this distant cousin of Forrest Gump comes off as a meager, unimportant film, and it never hits a consistently enjoyable stride. The performances are all fine, while the art direction and cinematography are often exquisite. It's just that the story being told here garners little support and sympathy for its protagonists, Ed Bloom (played by Albert Finney and Ewan McGregor) and son Will Bloom (Billy "I Don't Want to Be a Movie Star" Crudup).
Spouting exaggerated stories at his son's Alabama wedding, Ed Bloom (Finney, with a decent Southern accent) irritates his impatient son Will (Crudup) and winds up not speaking to him for years. When Ed is on his deathbed, Will comes to his side for a re-telling of some of his dad's more infamous fables, including his storybook quest to marry Will's mother (played by Jessica Lange full-grown, and Alison Lohman as a young woman). McGregor plays Ed's younger self in the flashbacks, and he looks remarkably like a young Finney. He is equally masterful with the Southern accent, and his characterization translates well into Finney's older take on Bloom. The casting is excellent.
Too bad the same can't be said for Bloom's tall-tale stories of a whitewashed deep American South. Complete with a traveling circus led by Danny DeVito, and a mysterious town in the woods called Spectre, Bloom's life, even filtered through his embellishment machine, isn't all that interesting. It's full of magical witches, giant men and even a wolf man (a strange passage with DeVito), and none of them really register as crowning creative achievements. Like a big story told badly, they are boring.
Meant to illustrate how the mind and imagination can embellish a simple life event, the moral of the story is wacky. It seems to be saying that we should respect a person's right to become delusional, and that a great imagination makes for a really good way to tolerate a mundane sales job or your average courtship. All of this is safe and fun within the confines of one's mind, but Burton's film seems to be celebrating a man's ability to outright lie about his past and alienate his son.
Certainly, fantasy tales can be prettier and more wondrous than reality, and that's why we have them. Big Fish, based on the Daniel Wallace novel Big Fish: A Story of Mythic Proportions, seems to be encouraging a full-on escape into the fantasy world: A world where racism doesn't exist in the Deep South, and where a father isn't being criminally insensitive by bullshitting his kid all the time. Had the film made that fantasy world a little more intriguing and original, it could've made for some passable, wonderfully morbid entertainment.
But it is so dull, and the fantasy world rarely sparks the imagination, despite periodically looking good. Thus, a feeling pervades that the Ed Bloom character is a big dolt who shunned the love of a child for useless tale weaving. Burton will continue to make movies that look terrific and tickle the brain with their offbeat nonsensicality. But Big Fish, his attempt at profundity, winds up being one of his more shallow films.
