Big Fish

Big Fish is all and more than what you would expect from Tim Burton’s creative mind – it contains his usual mix of outlandish plots, bizarre characters and wonderful technical ability, but also, for the first time that I can remember, he delivers a story that is so plausible (with a little imagination) that you want to believe.

The film revolves round a son’s attempts to get close to his dying father and understand who he really is – not something that is all that easy with a man who ‘hijacks’ his son’s wedding to become the centre piece of the event and ruin the day for him.

Albert Finney as the grumpy, but loveable father and Jessica Tandy, as his devoted wife, have an unmistakable chemistry on screen whilst the connection between Finney and his daughter-in-law feels real too. Billy Crudup plays the isolated son who struggles to understand his father and has shut him out since the wedding but starts to come to his senses following the news of his father’s illness and realisation that his wife’s pregnancy will mean that he will have a child who will want to know who their father is. He and Finney have just the right levels of affection and distance of 2 characters that don’t quite trust each other – for obvious reasons.

Ewan MacGregor plays the young Edward Bloom, a man driven by the belief that he knows how he is to die and therefore is not scared to pursue his dreams and goals to the end - even if this means confronting a witch, a werewolf, a giant and other wonderful characters to get what he is after. The story ranges from Austin to North Korea and back and the multitude of events and characters does not detract from the flow. Cameos from Danny De Vito and Steve Buscemi, both typically playing odd characters add to the film and give it even more fun and comedic value.

The film is a celebration of life – how to live it to the full and not to worry about dying – death is something that comes to us all and if we worry about it then we forget to live. Whilst this is in itself, not a new idea, the way that it is told and the way the actors behave gives it a depth and beauty that is potentially unexpected in a normal Burton piece.

Brilliantly told in a series of flashbacks from the point of view of Bloom, I defy anyone with any emotion in their body not to leave the theatre with at least a lump in their throat and holding back the tears. Go see it and for a couple of hours revert to your childhood and remember those stories that your granddad and dad told where they were the hero and the unachievable was always possible, even if when you found out the truth later on it was always good to believe in what ‘could’ have been.

Adam Nunn