Big Fish

Sometimes a director makes a movie where it is obvious it came from the heart. Francis Ford Coppola even called his One From the Heart. It bombed; it just didn’t seem to connect with anyone but him. For Barry Levinson it was Toys, which just plain didn’t work. Martin Scorsese had been planning Gangs of New York for many, many years, and it didn’t work for me. Big Fish is said to be a personal film from Tim Burton, a director I am highly ambivalent about. I hated Beetlejuice and Mars Attacks!, loved Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. This one I just felt sort of blah about, after a promising beginning. It’s too long, and some of the whimsy just didn’t work.