Storytelling doesn't match cinematography in Tim Burton's latest

Friday, January 09, 2004

By Ron Weiskind, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Garrison Keillor once proclaimed himself heir to a long tradition of oral fiction in his fanciful tales of Lake Wobegon, Minn. Some would call it storytelling, some would call it creative lying.

	'BIG FISH' Rating: PG-13 for a fight scene, some images of nudity and a suggestive reference. Starring: Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman. Director: Tim Burton.

And who would want to argue with John Ford, director of our greatest movie westerns, and his closing line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"? You know it: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

We love stories in any medium -- by ear or eye or backyard fence. We tend to use them as a reflection on life or as an escape from it. In Tim Burton's "Big Fish," Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) incorporates both elements simultaneously.

He has spent a lifetime embellishing episodes of his personal history, continually honing and crafting them until people accept them as fact -- except for his son, Will (Billy Crudup), who has heard them too often and knows they're not exactly reliable, despite his father's insistence to the contrary. As the old man battles cancer, Will tries to discover the truth. It turns out that, to a large degree, reality is indeed what you make of it.

Burton's most interesting movies have the texture of tall tales, with dreamscape visuals and grotesque personages we come to admire or, at least, enjoy watching -- the title characters in "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and "Edward Scissorhands," the Penguin and Catwoman in "Batman Returns," the incompetent real-life filmmaker Ed Wood, who never let his lack of talent diminish his zest for his work. They are all, in their way, children who never grew up. For that matter, so is Burton.

If "Big Fish" doesn't quite hold together, it may be that Edward Bloom does grow up, and there's nothing grotesque about him. The misfit qualities of those other Burton characters invest them with a certain charm. Ewan McGregor, who plays Bloom as a young man and literally walks us through his adventures, has his act thoroughly together. He leaves his small town in Alabama because he's outgrown it.

Even in his travels, he's a misfit only because he's the straight man in a cockeyed world that is at least partly of his own invention. He has the charm of a man who is sure of himself, who knows where he wants to go and ends up getting there. That's kind of a letdown, even for a guy who's all dressed up with places to go. "Big Fish" sprinkles magic dust on the top hat and taps it with a wand, but the rabbit refuses to come out.

Instead, we get the collection of strange and wondrous people who accompany Bloom on his journey. They include the gigantic Karl (played by 7-foot-6-inch actor Matthew McGrory), diminutive circus master Amos Calloway (Danny DeVito), the overly cordial residents of a secret town called Spectre, the witch (Helena Bonham Carter) whose glass eye will reveal the way in which you will die, the poet (Steve Buscemi) whose life takes a couple of sudden and unexpected turns thanks in part to Bloom, the Siamese twins with one heck of a singing act.

Among the movie's other pleasures are its art direction (credited to Roy Barnes, Robert Fechtman and Jack and Richard Johnson) and cinematography (Phillippe Rousselot). I also love that Bloom's wife, Sandra, is played in her later years by Jessica Lange and as a college student by Alison Lohman. The first time I laid eyes on Lohman, I thought she looked like a young version of Lange. They not only resemble each other, they're both wonderful actresses. As for Finney, he's solid but the Oscar talk is as over the top as Edward's stories.

The screenplay adaptation is by John August, who deserves more blame than credit for such films as "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," "Titan A.E." and the overrated "Go." A movie that's meant to celebrate storytelling should have a tighter screenplay than this.

Obviously we're going to prefer Edward Bloom's interpretation of his life story to his son's more mundane version of it. Even a legend contains elements of fact. So, indeed, print the legend. Just make sure the bunny shows up on cue.

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