BIG FISH (2003) ** Tim Burton endows the film with a gentle version of his latter-day fairy tale feel, but comes out closer to The Butcher's Wife than Edward Scissorhands. Much of the problem is that Albert Finney's self-mythologizing tales strike me as more pathetic than astounding, and of little more interest than his "real" life as an Alabama businessman. Danny DeVito saves the bits of film that he's in, as the all-time carnival hustler, but Jessica Lange seems as weary of Finney's stories as the audience is becoming. Besides DeVito, only Alison Lohman really works as a fairy tale character, and she perhaps only because she's a southern belle, and hence not expected to say much. Wait, that's not quite true-the Steve Buscemi scene where he decides to go wise guy (instead of poet) is also pretty good. Billy Crudup is unbearable as the face that keeps insisting on coming back onscreen, but at least some of the problem is the insidious inherent boredom of his character. If this was type-casting, it's the end of his career, at least outside of The Enron Chronicles or something. Despite it all, and after the film has already gone on for nearly an hour after you wish it would stop (only some wishes are granted in fairy tales, remember that), Burton brings things up quickly and impressively with a blanketing universal commentary on the dignity and significance of man, only to contaminate even that impression by going on about it long after he's made the point well.
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