(rated PG13) A tall tale (like the tale of the ‘fish’ who got away) about a dying father, Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) with long winded, Homeric-odyssey-feel-stories of his past, that don’t quite come together. Billy Crudup does a well intended job as Finney’s son who feels he can’t live up to dad’s expectations. Jessica Lange plays the under-used mother, while the movie focuses on Ewan McGregor as the young Finney and Alison Lohman as the young mother. Rounding out some of the characters in the weird journey are Steve Busemi and Danny DeVito, but this bizarre mess reminds us of its director Tim Burton who has a fetish for the name “Edward”(“Ed Wood” and “Edward Scissorhands”). Poor Tim Burton is in a post “Sleepy Hollow” and “Planet of the Apes” slump but at least he has a beautiful new real life wife (Helena Bonham Carter) who appears as Jenny in the story. In the end, big fish is as clumsy as a fish out of water.
