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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
67
$9.99
75
24 City
66
Adoration
74
Afghan Star
48
Alien Trespass
56
American Violet
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57
Away We Go
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
62
Big Man Japan
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55
Brothers Bloom, The
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx
Call of the Wild
63
Cheri
62
Cherry Blossoms
63
Dead Snow
65
Departures
18
Downloading Nancy
58
Easy Virtue
70
End of the Line, The
77
Every Little Step
64
Examined Life
80
Food, Inc.
38
Gigantic
56
Girl from Monaco, The
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
87
Gomorrah
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Great Buck Howard, The
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx
Home
82
Hunger
91
Hurt Locker, The
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
81
Il Divo
54
Is Anybody There?
71
Jerichow
58
Julia
74
Lemon Tree
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
40
Limits of Control, The
42
Little Ashes
64
Lymelife
50
Management
57
Merry Gentleman, The
66
Moon
35
New York
62
Not Forgotten
xx
Offshore
78
O'Horten
64
Outrage
40
Paris 36
54
Pontypool
71
Pressure Cooker
52
Quiet Chaos
83
Revanche
67
Rudo y Cursi
86
Seraphine
65
Sex Positive
70
Shall We Kiss?
77
Sin Nombre
59
Sleep Dealer
74
Song of Sparrows, The
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
82
Sugar
84
Summer Hours
61
Sunshine Cleaning
28
Surveillance
42
Tennessee
63
Tetro
64
Throw Down Your Heart
80
Tokyo Sonata
63
Tokyo!
70
Tony Manero
74
Treeless Mountain
88
Tulpan
74
Two Lovers
83
Tyson
83
U2 3D
60
Under Our Skin
69
Unmistaken Child
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
22
What Goes Up
45
Whatever Works
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
91
Hurt Locker, The
89
Goodbye Solo
88
Tulpan
87
Gomorrah
86
Seraphine
84
Summer Hours
83
U2 3D
83
Revanche
83
Tyson
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
82
Sugar
82
Hunger
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
81
Il Divo
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
80
Food, Inc.
80
Tokyo Sonata
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
78
O'Horten
77
Every Little Step
77
Sin Nombre
75
24 City
74
Treeless Mountain
74
Afghan Star
74
Two Lovers
74
Song of Sparrows, The
74
Lemon Tree
71
Pressure Cooker
71
Jerichow
70
Shall We Kiss?
70
Tony Manero
70
End of the Line, The
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
69
Unmistaken Child
67
$9.99
67
Rudo y Cursi
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
66
Adoration
66
Moon
65
Sex Positive
65
Departures
64
Outrage
64
Examined Life
64
Throw Down Your Heart
64
Lymelife
63
Tokyo!
63
Cheri
63
Dead Snow
63
Tetro
63
Great Buck Howard, The
62
Cherry Blossoms
62
Big Man Japan
62
Not Forgotten
61
Sunshine Cleaning
60
Under Our Skin
59
Sleep Dealer
58
Julia
58
Easy Virtue
57
Away We Go
57
Merry Gentleman, The
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
56
Girl from Monaco, The
56
American Violet
55
Brothers Bloom, The
54
Is Anybody There?
54
Pontypool
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
52
Quiet Chaos
50
Management
48
Alien Trespass
45
Whatever Works
42
Little Ashes
42
Tennessee
40
Limits of Control, The
40
Paris 36
38
Gigantic
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
35
New York
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
28
Surveillance
22
What Goes Up
18
Downloading Nancy
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
xx
Call of the Wild
xx
Home
xx
Offshore
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Big Fish
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for a fight scene, some images of nudity and a suggestive reference
Starring
Ewan McGregor,
Albert Finney,
Billy Crudup,
Jessica Lange,
Alison Lohman,
Helena Bonham Carter,
Steve Buscemi,
and
Jeff Campbell
Director Tim Burton brings his inimitable imagination on a heartwarming journey that delves deep into a fabled relationship between a father and his son. (Sony Pictures)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
John August
Daniel Wallace (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Tim Burton
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: April 27, 2004
Video: April 27, 2004
Theatrical: December 10, 2003
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
110 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
Big Fish really is a big delight.
90
Film Threat
Clint Morris
A tale that's so enriching, so heartwarming, so funny, so touching and so breathtaking, you'll wonder why the king of wackiness didn't branch out sooner.
88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Director Tim Burton finally hooks the one that got away: a script that challenges and deepens his visionary talent.
88
New York Post
Megan Lehmann
Even with Burton's imagination turning its trademark cartwheels, the film's big beating heart holds the whimsical offshoots steady.
88
USA Today
Mike Clark
Has enough tasty bait to satisfy an array of moviegoers: Burton fans, Albert Finney fans, fans of tall tales well spun by experts and fans of movies that don't look like any other.
88
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
A word of warning. Big Fish is so strange and so literary that audiences seeking conventional fare may get impatient with it. But it always takes effort to catch the big ones. This one is worth it.
88
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
This picture boasts a story about a yarn-spinning Southern father (Albert Finney) and a sober-sided son (Billy Crudup) that gives it ballast and staying power beyond anything in previous, precious Burton fables like "Edward Scissorhands" or "Ed Wood."
80
Film Threat
Rick Kisonak
An achievement of this magnitude is a stunning and extremely pleasant surprise.
80
Empire
Ian Freer
In anchoring the whimsy to something more heartfelt, Burton is greatly aided by Billy Crudup, who underplays potentially cringeworthy bedside scenes with his dying dad.
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
Burton rebounds in a big way with Big Fish, a Daniel Wallace adaptation and visual feast that recaptures the fairy-tale simplicity and wrenching emotional power of "Edward Scissorhands."
80
Newsweek
David Ansen
When it catches fire, this great-looking movie offers hilarious diversions.
75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Big Fish is a clever, smart fantasy that targets the child inside every adult, without insulting the intelligence of either.
75
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The movie is a gently overstuffed cinematic piñata, crammed with tall tales -- with giants and circuses and fairy-tale woods, plus a huge squirmy catfish, all served up with a literal matter-of-fact fancy that is very pleasing.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Burton's film is an American version of the Odyssey.
75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Too well-made and well-acted to be entirely cute -- but the result is fairly tepid in comparison to the overheated highlights of Burton's career.
75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Like virtually all fish stories, it's discursive, funny, full of boasting, a suspect mix of truth and lies with an emphasis on the latter.
70
Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis
There's delight to be had from watching Burton conjure up one fantastical Edward-inspired scenario after another.
70
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Such astringent details as a banjo player plucking a few ominous notes from "Dueling Banjos" when Ed first lays eyes on the Norman Rockwellian beauty of Spectre ensure that the story's fundamental sweetness never becomes cloying.
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
An engagingly whimsical, sporadically charming, frequently very funny Southern Gothic fantasy that somehow doesn't quite come together to be as magical or meaningful as it's intended to be.
63
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
The actor's job here is the hardest to pull off, since practical skepticism in a Tim Burton picture is next to villainy. Yet Crudup suggests complex grown-up feelings that makes the rest of Big Fish feel like an earnest collection of magic tricks.
63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
This is a theme tailor-made for Burton, although there are times in the movie when it feels like he's not taking enough advantage of it.
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Big Fish of course is a great-looking film, with a fantastical visual style that could be called Felliniesque if Burton had not by now earned the right to the adjective Burtonesque.
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
The problem is, there's just not enough Burton in Big Fish.
63
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
But Burton and August have added anger to the mix, and it sours much of the otherwise wondrous tone.
60
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
What is most disappointing about Big Fish is the nervousness of its fantasizing--a strange unwillingness, new in Burton's work, to trust the wit of the audience. [15 December 2003, p. 119]
60
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
For the first time, Burton seems comfortable walking around the real world.
60
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Simultaneously beguiling and frustrating -- the product of an imagist and dramatist uncomfortably conjoined.
50
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
It's nicely made, well shot, and reasonably well acted, yet it's enough to filet the life force right out of you. We need stories in order to dream, and to live. But that doesn't mean we have to buy every crappy one that comes down the pike.
50
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
The Alabama setting is as phony as the one in Forrest Gump, and for all of Finney's effectiveness as a yarn-spinning geezer, his whoppers seem disconnected from his character and each other--a weakness Burton fails to resolve with an awkward Felliniesque finale.
50
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
Has moments of genuine emotion...but overall, the film feels like it issues from a place Burton doesn't inhabit.
50
Variety
Todd McCarthy
The imaginatively illustrated but precariously precious film offers up a string of minor pleasures but never becomes more than moderately amusing or involving.
50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
What a waste of a fine cast.
50
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
The most curious thing about this magical-realist fable...is how thin and soft it is, how unpersuasive and ultimately forgettable even its most strenuous inventions turn out to be.
40
Slate
David Edelstein
The most fluid, lyrical, and even-toned work of his (Burton's) career. It's also the most boring by a factor of 10.
40
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
A misfire. The film that wants to be lighter than air instead crashes to earth with the swiftness of a concrete parachute.
40
Time
Richard Corliss
The film fairly groans from all the narrative gamesmanship and lavish romantic gestures...The unbewitched viewer may groan as well.
40
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
An abundance of dull exposition building up to the son's attempt to cap his father's whoppers climaxes with a tedious flurry of Fellini-esque endings and Spielbergian fillips. The magic doesn't work twice -- or even once.
40
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
The whole seems disjointed, incoherent and lacking in the startling originality of the other two Edwards (Scissorhands and Wood) who, half a career back, poured from Burton's distended outsider imagination.
40
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Tim Burton is all grown up and getting serious with this wildly scattershot tale.
30
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Big Fish stinks from the head.
30
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
A disappointingly dull thud of a fantasy.
30
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
A disappointingly dull thud of a fantasy.
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A long-winded indulgence in tear-and-a-smile whimsy, elevated above the merely irritating and saccharine by compelling art direction.
 The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 122 User Votes
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