Big Fish

By EWAN McDONALD

Herald rating: * * *

This is a movie that you'll desperately want to love. It's the story of a son who wants his father to tell him one thing: the truth about his life. It's the story of a man, the father, who can do almost anything except tell the truth about his life. And the father is played by Albert Finney, who seems to defeat time and get better with age.

As Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) understands it, his father, Edward (Finney), had amazing adventures and met unforgettable people in the years before he was born.

He knows this because his father has told him so, all his life, while his mother, Sandra (Jessica Lange), has listened and nodded, devotedly, at the memories.

Now Edward is dying in the upstairs bedroom. Sandra calls Will home from his journalism in Paris. Will brings his pregnant French wife (Marion Cotillard) and hears how Edward (played as a young man by Ewan McGregor) met a one-eyed witch (Helena Bonham-Carter) and went to Amos Calloway's circus (Danny DeVito).

One day, under the Big Top, he is entranced by Sandra (played by Alison Lohman), and the adventures continue: a giant fish, parachuting into China during the Korean war, the singing Siamese twins Ping and Jing, the town where people live forever.

Of course, these tales may be true. Of course, it may also be true that the old man has never left his home town in Alabama.

It's the sort of tale that Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood) enjoys filming, does so well. Less than a raging success at the box office, it may also be one of those movies that plays better in the front room.

* DVD, video rental June 16