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Big Fish
Will Bloom is a talented international journalist and his wife, French photojournalist Josephine Blum, pregnant with their first child, leaves Paris to return to Ashton, Alabama. There will be Will's hometown, where they both left on the grounds that his father Edward Bloom had cancer but soon died. Although contact with Will's mother, Sandra Bloom, Will has been neglected by his father for three years since his wedding. His father's case may be one of Edward's fiction before his death.
30 November 1927, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
17 November 1944, Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA
17 May 1973, West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA
1969
1956
8 July 1968, Manhasset, New York, USA
January 12, 2016
the father-and-son story to beat all father-and-son storiesSeptember 25, 2010
Reliant more on powerful familial emotions than wacky splendor, "Big Fish" treads as close to our real world as Tim Burton ever could - a melancholy dissection of paternal distance and never truly knowing how many lives those we love can truly affect.March 16, 2004
Burton shows the rivalry between father and son but not the rancor, which seems to fit with the film's calm lyricism. But the father-son conflict is meant as the dramatic crux, and a forceful actor would have given it some much-needed bite.April 29, 2009
Burton invokes the imagination from his crowd and succeeds in making us gasp in wonder.December 26, 2003
A long-winded indulgence in tear-and-a-smile whimsy.August 07, 2004
Overall, the film feels like it issues from a place Burton doesn't inhabit.December 26, 2003
A disappointingly dull thud of a fantasy.January 08, 2004
A compelling look at the relationships between fathers and sons, and the child coming to terms with the parent's mortality.December 22, 2010
Delightful, sad father-son story for teens and up.October 18, 2008
Never has going fishing or getting caught been such a treat.February 09, 2006
The film doesn't so much reject history as selectively rewrite it to its own reactionary, even offensive ends. This might perhaps be just about tolerable were the film funny, illuminating, insightful or moving. It is not.August 21, 2009
Burton, favoring form over content, flavor over fact, has been often criticized for not knowing how to bring his work to satisfactory resolution. But I'd call that a good thing. Blame it on his dad.