Starring: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup

6 out of 10 stars

Big Fish is one odd duck of a movie – or white elephant, depending upon your animal preferences. With one foot in acerbic, offbeat Tim Burton territory and another in saccharine schmaltz-land, it tries to marry the divisive styles into one coherent movie that has its sugary cake and eats it with irony, too. Alas, like most Burton films, while there are many things to like about it individually (including one of the most stellar ensemble casts in years), as a whole it never fully comes together. Unlike past Burton flicks like Ed Wood or even Sleepy Hollow, though, it doesn't have that fun, edgy quality that reflected the eccentricity of its characters. While there are fantastical elements in Big Fish, it plays pretty much like a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. And you can practically see the once-iconoclastic director looming over his movie, ladle in hand, ready to drench the whole thing entirely in syrup.

Starting out with a whiff of the chillingly mordant but ultimately subsuming itself in the maudlin, Big Fish's story is its own worst enemy. Not because it's badly written (John August's adaptation of Daniel Wallace's novel is, at times, quite eloquent), but because the inherent structure of the story directly reflects the movie's main character, consummate storyteller Edward Bloom, whose life isn't so much a straight line as it is a series of looping anecdotes. As such, Big Fish trots from adventure to adventure, between fractured fairy-tale past and mortality-laden present, and develops a disjointed quality that keeps it from building much momentum, diminishing its returns almost before it reaches the halfway mark. With all this moving back and forth, the movie sabotages its protagonist right out of the starting gate, taking him from pleasantly opaque (is there something about him we don't know?) to blandly one-dimensional (aw, such a nice guy!).

Bloom himself is a quite a character though, and as a master spinner of tall tales about local witches, marauding giants and, yes, one big-ass fish, you'd think he'd be more than enough for two actors. Unfortunately, his stature is neatly cut in half by the casting of Ewan McGregor as the young Edward and Albert Finney as the ailing, elder Bloom. As good as he is, McGregor isn't weighty enough to provide the film with a solid center, and Finney's presence is doled out only in dribs and drabs. (Plus, this is a director's movie if there ever was one – somebody's been catching up on their Spielberg!) With only a tenuous hold on the main character, the audience finds itself identifying more with wayward son William (Billy Crudup), who's returned home from Europe and holds a monster grudge against his dad for never telling him "the truth" about anything, forsaking solid reality for wispy fantasy. William, unfortunately, also trots out that old chestnut about dad never being around enough, which immediately undercuts the movie's fact vs. fiction dichotomy (little is made of William's choice of journalism as a profession in light of his father's penchant for embellishment). With his plaintive "you didn't play catch enough with me" attitude, William's immediately cast as the wet blanket of the movie, a guy who doesn't have serious issues but just needs a nudge in the ribs and a "Lighten up!"

The movie could use a nudge like that too, as from the get-go Burton bathes everything in an ethereal light and gives it the weighty import of American Folklore And Mythology. While he's obviously having fun with Edward's adventures, they're never as hilarious (or as frightening) as anything in a Coen brothers movie and are too grounded to even begin to approach a kind of magical realism. Big Fish starts out sweet, with young Edward as the toast of his small Southern town, seeing as he grew up fearless because he once peered into the glass eye of a witch and saw how he was going to die. Imported with the knowledge of his passing, he takes on any challenge that comes along, from football to entrepreneurialism. Things take a turn for the offbeat when the town's beset by a feral giant (the 7 ½-foot tall Matthew McGrory, in the movie's most touching performance), whom brave Edward confronts; it's here that the movie briefly sparks into a fairy tale, as a seemingly ingenuous Edward offers himself up as a sacrificial meal, only to be turned down and befriended. (It's a testament to McGregor that we don't think he's got a scheme behind his genuine smile.) Realizing that he, like the giant, is too big for the town (here the Heavy Symbolism makes itself known with a thud), the two embark on big adventures.

Edward's first two escapades are the film's bright spots by far, as the literal Road Less Traveled takes our hero to the small, hidden town of Spectre, which is too happy, too bucolic and too damn good to be true. Here, Burton invests the whimsy and cheeriness with a dark undertone that signals to everyone that something can't be right here (alas, the darkness is later washed away clean). The brief sojourn in Spectre gives way to a traveling circus (headed by Danny DeVito) which looks great but isn't designed to do much except introduce Edward to his future wife, Sandy (Alison Lohman), though it's one magical moment to behold as Burton takes the Time Standing Still concept and spins it with sumptuous romance. Pursuing Sandy, he weds her, only to be shipped off to Korea, where he undertakes the most dangerous missions imaginable. And is then presumed dead. And then comes back. And then takes a job as a traveling salesman. And then is on the road, where he always comes back with a story...

It's about here that Big Fish loses its pull, with too many disjointed stories and elements cohabiting with the present-day William's "I never sang for my father" moroseness. There is joy to be had in the movie, though, if you just sit back and watch a magical cast waltz by like a parade that's hosted by the affable McGregor. Lohman is an eerily prescient precursor to Jessica Lange, who plays the elder Sandy almost as a radiant beam of light. Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Buscemi, Robert Guillaume, and a host of others (including a pair of Siamese twins) flit through Edward's story, though despite all their wondrousness, it's actually Crudup, grounded in reality, who gives the film's best performance. While the film may take William's angst too seriously, Crudup tempers it with melancholy, self-effacement, humor and bitterness in equal parts. Except when he's asked to carry the lump-in-the-throat ending on his shoulders, Crudup sails serenely through as the movie's lone voice of skepticism, at last fulfilling his promise as a screen actor. It's he, and not McGregor or Finney, who ultimately hooks the movie and nets it away from everyone else.