Big Fish(Tim Burton)

For my movie I watched Big Fish, and for about the first hour and a half or so of the movie, I honestly could not tell where on earth the movie was going or what exactly the central plot was. It seemed to me like it was some kind of mixture of a father son relationship story occasionally interrupted by Ewan McGregor wandering through a five year old's fever dream. I was enjoying the parts where they were telling the stories of Edward's life, but I wasn't finding much interest in the scenes of the present between Edward and Will, which I thought to be the central purpose of the whole thing. So I was sitting 90 minutes into the movie, as Will is driving to Jenny's house, reasonably entertained but completely baffled, figuring I would write a few lines, give it a five out of ten, and never so much as think about this movie ever again, and then I watched 30 of the best minutes of a movie that I have ever seen. The tone completely shifts from a more light and funny adventure story to this beautiful, deep conclusion, and it is done so masterfully. The ending could not have been written more perfectly, as Will gradually comes to the realization that many of his father's stories are actually true, and through the story Jenny tells he realizes just how good of a man his father is, and has always been. The tension builds up beautifully as Will learns of his father's stroke, and continues to build until reaching what has to be one of the better endings to a movie ever written. Billy Crudup in particular, who had been dependably good the whole movie but never anything special, delivers nothing short of a phenomenal performance in Edward's death scene, and I would be genuinely stunned if anybody got through that scene without tearing up. As the realist son tells the tall tale to his father for the first and last time, the tale he never knew, the two finally come to an understanding, and it is a perfectly poetic end to the movie. And as I looked back on the movie, I realized how what had at first seemed like a bunch of garbled nonsense had perfectly strung together to set up the climax of the film. The moment is a long time coming, but it was more than worth the wait.
9 out of 10 would watch again