TotalTelly.co.uk

Devoted to Popular, Cult and Retro TV

Big Fish [2004]


RRP: £19.99
Our Price: £1.48 (subject to change)

Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

After a string of mediocre movies, director Tim Burton regains his footing as he shifts from macabre fairy tales to southern tall tales. Big Fish twines in and out of the oversized stories of Edward Bloom, played as a young man by Ewan McGregor and as a dying father by Albert Finney. Edward's son Will (Billy Crudup) sits by his father's bedside but has little patience with the old man's fables, because he feels these stories have kept him from knowing who his father really is. Burton dives into Bloom's imagination with zest, sending the determined young man into haunted woods, an idealised southern town, a travelling circus and much more. The result is sweet but--thanks to the director's dark and clever sensibility--never saccharine. The film also features Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman, Helena Bonham Carter, Danny DeVito and Steve Buscemi. --Bret Fetzer


Story telling as the embellishment of real life
Review date: 2008-11-09 Rating: 10 out of 10

It turns all around the father and his son and their difficult relation. It was perfect as long as the son believed in the stories the father was telling him all the time, that is to say as long as Father Christmas really was a childhood hero. But older age came and those stories sounded all silly, even sillier and sillier and they led to a complete break between the two, the father and the son, till the father came to the point of departing from this life. The son and his wife came back and he was confronted to the stories again. But one day when he was sorting out some old documents of his father's for his mother he came across a strange deed that showed the existence of an estate under the name of his father. And he went there and discovered that this estate had some tremendous reality and that the witch of the old stories was the young girl from some other old story who had become a piano teacher and had benefited from this estate. She sure was in love with the father but the father was faithful to his wife. The son then discovers that all the stories were just embellished true stories. The Siamese Chinese twin women were in fact true Chinese twins though not Siamese. And an epiphany takes place. When the son was keeping watch over his father at the hospital one night, the father called him and the son understood the father was asking him to tell him a bedside story to put him to sleep, the big sleep. And the son is inspired to tell him his own version of his father's embellished stories and that story enables the father to go to his long sleep with all the characters of his own stories. And when the funeral arrives, the son, his wife and his mother can only see with their own eyes that all the characters of these stories are true people. But in the meantime some miracle had happened. The son on the command from his dying father had taken him away from the hospital to the river where he had put him back into the water, as if the father was only a captured big fish living among the humans and waiting for this last minute to recapture his true nature and swim away down the river where he had come from. That's when the film could have turned grotesque or just funny strange. But Tim Burton is a genius of the paranormal and how to make it look so natural that we are obliged to believe in it and to go back to our infancy, when we believed wonderful stories full of unbelievable wonders that we could only believe in deep in our hearts because they were so beautiful. Tim Burton is a magician that mesmerizes us with surrealistic images.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines


Similar Products

Reviews


Burton does it again!
Review date: 2008-02-04 Rating: 10 out of 10

Once again Tim Burton pulls off a totaly original film unlike any you have ever seen before. The life of Edward Bloom is amazing and I love the stories which he tells his son, they are simply magical to hear. I wont ruin the ending for you but you will love it! 'The story...of my life'! Strongly recommended.

really unmissable
Review date: 2008-01-07 Rating: 10 out of 10

one of the most original, beautiful and heart warming movies of the last few years.. the blend between reality and fantasy is truly unique. if u like the surreal worlds tim burton creates, then u have to see it..it really is his best - not being as dark as other offerings from him- with ed scissorhands and ed wood coming second to my book... amazing storytelling, at times visually stunning and a great extended cast make this a gem of a film .. a celebration of life while exploring the disfunctional relationship between a father and a son.. Be prepared to share a tear towards the end :) 6 stars

Sometimes Fiction is Better than the Truth
Review date: 2007-07-16 Rating: 10 out of 10

Tim Burton's return to genuine film making is a welcome endeavor indeed. Here he creates a film that reminds me of what great film making is all about: fantasy, love and reflecting on the human spirit. I scoffed at a review that compared Big Fish to The Wizard of Oz when Big Fish first came out, but upon viewing it the comparison is really not hyperbolic at all and is actually quite justified. There is a unique carelessness and an innocence that resides perfectly and constantly in both films. To me, both films are truly a breath of fresh air and hope.

Big Fish is a book written by Daniel Wallace and is the delightful story of Edward Bloom, who has reached the twilight of his life and surrounds himself with his son, daughter-in-law and his wonderful wife Sandra. Eddie has seemingly lived a fantastic life of lies and exaggerations and his son has grown to call his bluff on more than one occasion. In fact, his son returns not just to possibly say good-bye to his father, but to attempt to get him to spill the beans on the truth of who his old man really is. Eddie of course, stands by his stories and brushes off his son's accusations nonchalantly. Most of the film we see Eddie revisit his life as a whole, seen through only his own stories. How he once befriended a 12 foot man; how he arrived in a town that was paradise, once to early and once too late when he turned it back into paradise again; how he joined the circus for three years so he could find out pieces information once a month from Amos the ringmaster about the girl Eddie was sure would be his wife and how Sandra would believe Eddie to be dead in war but he would return. The stories are full of details that would clearly indicate they are false but sometimes they are just better that way. Eddie is a mythological figure and that is just fine with him and as a viewer it's fine with me as well.

Eddie is played by Albert Finney who is in turn mirrored by Eddie's youthful version, the outstanding Ewen MacGregor who once again proves his versatility. Jessica Lange plays the older Sandra and she is played as a youngster by the talented Alison Lohman who carries as much energy and beauty as you could expect for a role with so little dialogue and so much importance. She is a real find and makes you fall in love with her right along with Eddie. Helena Bonham Carter brings her talents to the roles of The Witch and Jenny (or all of the other important women in Eddie's life). Steve Buscemi shows up, which is always a pleasant surprise and of course Amos is played by Danny DeVito who is as enjoyable as ever. The flat Keanu Reeves clone Billy Crudup is perhaps the only drawback, but he is a safe casting call as Eddie's son and does what he can in discovering that his father is exactly what he says he is and more.

Let me just add that I believe Big Fish is a family film. I don't see why it shouldn't be rated PG rather than PG-13. The language rises above the prime time television level once, there is blood only in a comedic and romantic fight sequence that has a truly admirable message and there is a women's nude rear displayed briefly and non-sexually. This is not grounds for a PG-13 movie. I would bring a seven year old to see this. In fact, my guess is that the movie was directed at this demographic. When content is not exploitative, it is not really inappropriate. I can't see why Rock Diesel films get PG-13ed when the message is nothing short of "Kill the bad guys, make a lame joke, drive and crash really cool vehicles and get the dirty chick". Anyway, Big Fish may be about a guy who is stretching the truth but the characters' hearts couldn't be more firmly in the right place. The scene when Eddie fills an entire field with Sandra's favorite flower and stands in the middle of the field, outside of her window and calls out to her comes to mind. It brings joy to my heart in a way that only a film like The Wizard of Oz can, and a small child should never ever miss that kind of message. Big Fish is a smart film that really generates a ton of emotion and convincing special effects. I don't doubt for a moment that more work went into the effects than money. This film carried a sense of hope, pride, real love, respect, fantasy and the crucial element that films of these tainted times often forget: natural and unforced optimism.

Then there is Tim Burton. He is the filmmaker that can put all of these elements together and for the first time tug at your emotions as well. Two things make this film better than Burton's other work. Firstly, it is real and doesn't dwell on being over-stylized and under-dramatized. Secondly, it is pure, clean and full of moments we can all relate too. Tim Burton has made a film that will alienate his older fans who haven't matured like he has, without "selling out" (he's done that before) and he has made a film that the whole world can watch, enjoy and discover this unique filmmaker. I'm glad that he saved some of his real film making inspiration for this wonderful little story.

Magical (and much better than Tim Burton's others)
Review date: 2006-10-21 Rating: 10 out of 10

Big Fish is a truly marvellous film, a tear-jerking, smile-inducing journey through a whole bag of fairy-tales, all wrapped up in the evolving relationship between a good son and his larger-than-life father. The whole film is perfectly judged. The cast is just right, the humour is finely judged, the pathos is heart-warming. (And the DVD has plenty of extras about special effects, the author, the director, the characters, etc, if that sort of thing matters to you.)
A really nice, underrated film to watch with a loved one, or at least someone you won't mind laughing and crying with...

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Billy Crudup
Helena Bonham Carter
Jessica Lange
Ewan McGregor
Albert Finney

Creators:
Ewan McGregor (Primary Contributor)
Albert Finney (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
EAN: 5035822493339
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL,
Release date: 2004-06-07
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audience rating: Parental Guidance
Region code: 2
Running time: 120 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2004-01-09
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired)
Language: Arabic (Subtitled)
Language: Bulgarian (Subtitled)
Language: Danish (Subtitled)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Finnish (Subtitled)
Language: Greek (Subtitled)
Language: Hebrew (Subtitled)
Language: Hindi (Subtitled)
Language: Hungarian (Subtitled)
Language: Icelandic (Subtitled)
Language: Italian (Subtitled)
Language: Norwegian (Subtitled)
Language: Polish (Subtitled)
Language: Romanian (Subtitled)
Language: Swedish (Subtitled)
Language: Hungarian (Dubbed)
Language: Italian (Dubbed)

Add to Cart

© 2006 Darren Hester, DesignsByDarren.com, Some Rights Reserved.
Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional