Tim Burton Fishes in the Mainstream
Offbeat Director Serves Sentimental Tripe with Big Fish

In the Hollywood high school of film directors, Tim Burton has always been the outsider. He’s the nerdy creative kid dressed in black looking out for hallway noogies from the popular guys like James Cameron and Joel Schumacher. Even when he gets his hands on a pep-rally project like Planet of the Apes or Batman Returns, Burton always manages to dress it up darkly in his own gothic style.

Of course, that’s one of the reasons that his fans love his work. Burton’s macabre fingerprints are usually all over whatever project he happens to be working on from his early films Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice to his bizarre-o animated works The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach to his more contemporary flicks Sleepy Hollow and Mars Attacks!

Watching the new Burton movie Big Fish is akin to seeing the pasty-faced goth kid arrive at school in khaki pants, blue Oxford shirt and penny loafers with a bouquet in hand for the prom queen. Burton’s attempt to court the mainstream is so out of character that the film is doomed from the get-go.

The movie stars Billy Crudup as Will Bloom, son of a genial Alabama blowhard named Edward Bloom (Albert Finney). Will has heard Ed’s exaggerated stories of his youthful exploits for as long as he can remember and blames the fanciful tales for his not being able to get close to his real dad. Will and his wife Josephine (Marion Cotillard) travel from France to Alabama as Ed nears death. As Ed tells Josephine these same stories, Will begins to realize that there may be more truth to them than he once believed.

This slim premise of a story is fleshed out with flashback scenes starring Ewan McGregor as the young Ed and featuring all manner of quirky characters and unbelievable events. That’s where Burton is set to work his magic, sending the audience to unbelievable places to meet fantastic characters.

Except it never really happens. The magical portions of the film are only slightly magical yet still have a forced, unbelievable quality. The role of Karl the Giant is played by Matthew McGrory, an actual human suffering from gigantism. His supposed feats of strength are overshadowed by the fact that the actor is practically crippled by his infirmity.

The sentimental parts of the film are even worse. Despite a stellar cast featuring Finney and Jessica Lange as Ed’s wife, Sandy, the dialogue never ever leaps off the page. Young Ed’s obsession with marrying Sandy after seeing her for one brief moment is meant to be sweet but comes off instead as rather creepy and stalker-like.

Even the humorous parts of Big Fish seem forced. Aside from one decades-old joke involving a dead milkman, the laughs are few and far between and don’t have the originality to them usually associated with a Burton project.

One of the great things about Burton films is the music provided by longtime collaborator (and former Oingo Boingo frontman) Danny Elfman. In Big Fish, Elfman follows Burton’s lead and originality is replaced with abject sentiment. Big flourishes of strings tell the audience what to feel and when. This from the same man who composed the amazing music for Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands!

Having said all this, I’m sure there are a lot of people who will find Big Fish as wondrous and heartwarming as any film released in recent memory. Tim Burton fans, however, will find his attempt at courting a mainstream audience a little hard to swallow.

Big Fish is rated PG-13 for a fight scene, some images of nudity and a suggestive reference. It is currently playing at Regal Cinemas in Boone.