journal features

movie review - Big Fish

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Halifax, 2004.01.18

This is a Tim Burton flick. I'm beginning to think that Burton is bi-polar, or something. His movies are such a hit-and-miss collection, you never know what you're going to see. I loved Mars Attacks! (a movie with some of the finest casting of all time), Sleepy Hollow, and A Nightmare Before Christmas. But then there was Beetlejuice... and Batman. And now this.

The movie is about a man who tells stories. Stories mostly about his own life. But stories riddled with such great embellishments that his son suspects he's never known any of his father but lies.

It's an odd thing upon which to tell a movie, and there really isn't very far to take the concept, it seems. There are a number of entertaining and wonderful scenes in this movie, but they don't really come together into much of a story.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov