Saturday, July 19, 2008

Review of Big Fish

"Big Fish", a film directed by Tim Burton, is one of the films we checked out of the library last week. I had not heard of this film except that Netflix kept trying to recommend it to me and I turned my nose at it several times. The explanation just didn't sound interesting to me.

William Bloom (Billy Crudup) tries to learn more about his dying father, Edward (Albert Finney), by piecing together the facts out of the various fantastic tales and legends of epic proportions he's been told over the years. Edward was a traveling salesman, and his journeys throughout the South are the seed of the tales. Directed by Tim Burton, the movie co-stars Ewan McGregor (as the young Edward), Helena Bonham-Carter and Steve Buscemi.

This is a movie about a true story-teller. I don't know if any of you have any story-tellers in your lives, but I don't know anyone at this point who likes to tell tall tales. I remember when I was very young and spent a lot of time with relatives in Mississippi it seemed like everyone was a story teller. This pastime is more entertaining to me than many things I can think of. "Big Fish" brought back a lot of memories and was so enjoyable to listen to all the stories and how Albert Finney told them. Each story was both funny and outrageous. It's a bit understandable how his son doesn't appreciate them at first, but when a story teller is gone those stories disappear unless someone decides to carry them on.

I highly recommend this movie. I believe it's rated PG-13. Possibly because of some scary parts.

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