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Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Big Fish
EMAILPRINTColumbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 43 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 125 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
John August
Daniel Wallace (novel)
Directed by: Tim Burton
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 10, 2003
DVD: April 27, 2004
Running Time: 110 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
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)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Batman Beetlejuice Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Ed Wood Edward Scissorhands Mars Attacks! Pee-wee's Big Adventure Planet of the Apes Sleepy Hollow Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street The Nightmare Before Christmas
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
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.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Director Tim Burton finally hooks the one that got away: a script that challenges and deepens his visionary talent.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
An achievement of this magnitude is a stunning and extremely pleasant surprise.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
When it catches fire, this great-looking movie offers hilarious diversions.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Big Fish is a clever, smart fantasy that targets the child inside every adult, without insulting the intelligence of either.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Burton's film is an American version of the Odyssey.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
There's delight to be had from watching Burton conjure up one fantastical Edward-inspired scenario after another.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The problem is, there's just not enough Burton in Big Fish.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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]
Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
For the first time, Burton seems comfortable walking around the real world.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Simultaneously beguiling and frustrating -- the product of an imagist and dramatist uncomfortably conjoined.
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
The film fairly groans from all the narrative gamesmanship and lavish romantic gestures...The unbewitched viewer may groan as well.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Tim Burton is all grown up and getting serious with this wildly scattershot tale.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 125 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Alonso C. gave it a10:
A You-Must-See Movie, one of my favorite movies of all time, it has a funny part and has it serious and lovely part, you always learn something about life in this movie. And as Sam F. Says, this is one of those movie where you can say that if don't liked it, it's because you didn't get it. One of the greatest movies of all time (in MY opinion).
erix s gave it a10:
Very touching...!! My girlfriend cried after seeing this movie, TWICE !!!
sam f gave it a9:
This is one of those movies where I can say that if you don't like it, it's because you don't get it.
Shaun gave it an8:
I am not easily moved by movies, mostly because most of them don't attempt to reach an emotional nerve without throwing on the cheese. This movie does it perfectly - a beautiful and moving story, well told.
Chad S gave it a9:
Big Fish I Love You and I Will Cherish You! enough said.
Colin D. gave it a9:
Big Fish, though a bit wordy at the start, pulls together and will mesmerize any viewer that can recognize the contrasts between a creatively imaginative child and an adult that utilizes a standard, and sometimes dull worldview. I'm starting to believe the critics aren't worthy of their role.
Scott D gave it a10:
There are few movies I would give a shameless perfect score, and this is one of them. Big Fish has been my number-one favorite movie ever since I saw it a few years ago. I have since watched it at least 15 more times, and every time I watch it, I never fail to be amazed, touched, and interested. There are so many things to think about in this movie, and literally every time I watch it some new metaphor or parallel occurs to me. Do not listen to the critics, because obviously they are too heartless to understand how truly awe-inspiring and amazing this film is.
