Big Fish
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: December 10, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
15
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
PremiereGlenn Kenny
Big Fish really is a big delight. Read full review
90
Film ThreatClint 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
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Director Tim Burton finally hooks the one that got away: a script that challenges and deepens his visionary talent. Read full review
88
New York PostMegan Lehmann
Even with Burton's imagination turning its trademark cartwheels, the film's big beating heart holds the whimsical offshoots steady. Read full review
88
USA TodayMike 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
88
Chicago TribuneMichael 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
88
Baltimore SunMichael 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
80
NewsweekDavid Ansen
When it catches fire, this great-looking movie offers hilarious diversions. Read full review
80
The A.V. ClubNathan 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
80
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
An achievement of this magnitude is a stunning and extremely pleasant surprise. Read full review
80
EmpireIan 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
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen 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
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Big Fish is a clever, smart fantasy that targets the child inside every adult, without insulting the intelligence of either. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Burton's film is an American version of the Odyssey. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn 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
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence 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
70
TV Guide MagazineMaitland 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
70
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
There's delight to be had from watching Burton conjure up one fantastical Edward-inspired scenario after another. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam 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
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
The problem is, there's just not enough Burton in Big Fish. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
But Burton and August have added ­anger to the mix, and it sours much of the otherwise wondrous tone. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger 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
63
Miami HeraldRene 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
63
Boston GlobeWesley 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
60
The New YorkerAnthony 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]
60
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Simultaneously beguiling and frustrating -- the product of an imagist and dramatist uncomfortably conjoined.
60
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
For the first time, Burton seems comfortable walking around the real world. Read full review
50
VarietyTodd 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
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)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
50
The New York TimesDana 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
50
SalonStephanie 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
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
What a waste of a fine cast. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan 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
40
The Hollywood ReporterKirk 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
40
TimeRichard Corliss
The film fairly groans from all the narrative gamesmanship and lavish romantic gestures...The unbewitched viewer may groan as well. Read full review
40
Village VoiceJ. 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
40
L.A. WeeklyElla 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
40
SlateDavid 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
40
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Tim Burton is all grown up and getting serious with this wildly scattershot tale. Read full review
30
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Big Fish stinks from the head. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
A disappointingly dull thud of a fantasy. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick 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
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