A colorful whale of a tale

Big fish often swim in small ponds, but in Tim Burton’s wistful new film about a son, a father and the lies that come between them there are no small ponds -- just big, bright movie sets shimmering and bubbling with the director’s imagination. Based on Daniel Wallace’s delicate wisp of a novel, “Big Fish” tells the story of a raconteur who, after a lifetime of spinning whoppers about lachrymose giants and two-headed women, faces the prospect of dying under the dark cloud of his son’s resentment.

There are worse paternal sins than fish tales as big as Moby-Dick, but you wouldn’t know it from Will Bloom. As played by Billy Crudup or directed by Burton (it’s hard to tell which), Will comes across as a prematurely old fogy who has spent his life stockpiling grudges against his father and the man’s predilection for self-flattering exaggeration. Played in the past by an exuberant Ewan McGregor and on the deathbed by a barely restrained Albert Finney (the robust actor often looks anxious to initiate a miraculous recovery), Edward is one in a line of fictional fathers who has long tended his own garden at the expense of his family. Edward’s saving grace is his imagined life, a garden as lush and wild as that in a Maurice Sendak storybook.

A fable about fathers and sons, lies and misconceptions, “Big Fish” is the straightest movie in Burton’s kinky repertoire. Or, rather, Will’s tale is the straightest story the director has told. Photographed in the steady, personality-free style of the studio prestige movie, Will’s part of the film tells of a soul-troubled young man trying to make peace with his past. Married to a French woman (Marion Cotillard), he works as a journalist in Paris, having tried to escape his father’s gaudy good humor by devoting himself to facts in a country where people take themselves even more seriously than he does. When Will receives word of his father’s illness, he grimly packs up his wife and disapproval and carries both back home to small-town Alabama.

Like the novel, John August’s screenplay begins with the son talking about the father, a man who would be a myth. In Wallace’s “Big Fish,” that myth assumes the shape of gentle absurdity. Along with the writer’s embracing soft tone, the charm of the book lies in how it fuses the quotidian with the extraordinary: Edward experiences trials fit for a classical hero except that, unlike Hercules and Ulysses, his involve scrubbing fouled dog cages and selling girdles to waddling matrons. Burton cranks up the visual comedy of the character’s self-mythology and lets it rip, sometimes to joyously dizzy effect. In the director’s hands, even Edward’s birth becomes an occasion for comic hyperbole, as the newborn bursts from his mother like a shot, sliding down a hospital corridor like a bar of runaway soap.

Edward rarely stops moving in the years that follow, and much of what’s buoyant and appealing about “Big Fish” involves his quixotic pilgrimage toward selfhood. There’s delight to be had from watching Burton conjure up one fantastical Edward-inspired scenario after another, whether it’s the story of a poet turned bank robber (a wonderful Steve Buscemi), a circus interlude (featuring Danny DeVito) or a surreal peek at a variety show for comrades in North Korea. It’s in these stories -- by turns eye-popping and expressively de-saturated of color, tweaked and lovingly twisted -- that Burton, working with the talented team of cinematographer Philippe Rousselot and production designer Dennis Gassner, allows himself to be his most Burton-like, freed from the dull restraint of everyday life and movies.

Alas, we are allowed to stay with young Edward for only a short time. Because half of “Big Fish” involves an adult son and his terminally ill father and takes place in the familiar realm of accusation, confession, turnaround and acceptance, Burton regularly -- and with palpable reluctance -- yanks us out of Edward’s florid imagination and thrusts us back into the desert of Will’s reproach. Only Jessica Lange, as Edward’s wife and Will’s mother, brightens this dreary return to family melodrama, whether she’s crawling into a bathtub with her husband or tenderly chiding her son for his severity. Too bad that Lange, who despite her glamorous appearance has apparently reached the cinematic age wherein actresses are relegated to matron roles, isn’t given more to do -- she embroiders her scenes with delicate feeling.

One of the few visionaries working in Hollywood, Burton has not always had an easy time sizing his creativity to fit the studio formula, and it’s noteworthy a triumph such as the delirious freak-out “Mars Attacks!” was greeted with widespread derision. Like Will Bloom, critics tend to whack away at the unknown and unfamiliar with the gusto of deranged gardeners. Since then Burton has retreated into safer territory, including a lavishly mounted if insipid remake of “Planet of the Apes.” “Big Fish” marks an improvement on that impersonal exercise, and yet there’s something sad about Burton directing a movie that pleads the case for imagination. One of the filmmaker’s glories is that he’s always believed adults can experience the world with the infinite vision of children. I bet he still reads Dr. Seuss.

*

‘Big Fish’

MPAA rating: PG-13, a fight scene, some images of nudity and a suggestive reference

Times guidelines: A bloody fight but otherwise kid-friendly

Ewan McGregor...Young Edward Bloom

Albert Finney...Edward Bloom

Billy Crudup...Will

Jessica Lange...Sandra

Helena Bonham Carter...Jenny and witch

Columbia Pictures presents a Jinks/Cohen Company, a Zanuck Company production, released by Columbia Pictures. Director Tim Burton. Writer John August. Based on the novel by Daniel Wallace. Producers Richard D. Zanuck, Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks. Director of photography Philippe Rousselot. Production designer Dennis Gassner. Editor Chris Lebenzon. Costume designer Colleen Atwood. Music Danny Elfman. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

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