MSRP: $30.99
It is rather odd that Sony decided to release Tim Burtonâs
Big Fish on UHD in early May, as I often think of this film, along side
Field of Dreams, as terrific Fatherâs Day movies. Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) loves to tell tall tales about himself, so much so that at his son Will (Billy Crudup) is but a footnote in the story Edward tells on Willâs wedding day of how he caught a rather large and uncatchable fish with his wedding ring on the day Will was born. That incident caused a wall to be built between father and son where they did not speak to each other for three years, until Will receives a phone call from his mother (Jessica Lange) informing him that Edward does not have much longer to live. Will and his pregnant wife Josephine (Marion Cotillard) fly home from Paris, hoping to reconcile the father-son relationship, with Will hoping to learn something true about his father. Not much has changed, as Edward relates more tall tales about himself t
From his son s point of view, Edward Bloom s timing is off. He spent the years before his son s birth having amazing adventures and meeting unforgettable characters, and the years after the birth, telling his stories to his son, over and over and over again. Albert Finney, who can be the most concise of actors, can also, when required, play a tireless blowhard, and in Big Fish, his character repeats the same stories so relentlessly you expect the eyeballs of his listeners to roll up into their foreheads and be replaced by tic-tac-toe diagrams, like in the funnies.
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Some, however, find old Edward heroic and charming, and his wife is one of them. Sandra (Jessica Lange) stands watch in the upper bedroom where her husband is leaving life as lugubriously as he lived it. She summons home their son, Will (Billy Crudup). Will, a journalist working in Paris, knows his father s stories by heart and has one final exasperated request: Could his father now finally tell him the tr